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Utilities (Apple) Businesses Software Apple

Revealing Hidden PDF Services in Mac OS X 10.2.4 90

Posted by pudge from the better-than-faxing dept.
cspiff writes "In Mac OS X 10.2.4, Apple quietly added the ability for users and developers to enhance the standard Print dialog with custom PDF-handling options. To enable it, just create a folder '~/Library/PDF Services' and populate it with aliases to applications, scripts, Unix tools, or other folders. Those items then show up in the Print dialog as optional handlers for Mac OS X's built-in 'Save as PDF' feature. Drop a renamed alias to your mail client in there, and you've added convenient 'Send PDF as Email' functionality to every application."
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Revealing Hidden PDF Services in Mac OS X 10.2.4 More

Revealing Hidden PDF Services in Mac OS X 10.2.4

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  • Holy smokin' joes... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisum AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:03AM (#5543356) Homepage Journal
    ... is it just me, or does OSX frickin' rock or what?

    What would you have to do to do something like this in Windows land? Some sort of .DLL monkeybusiness? Registry hacking?

    Man, am I ever glad I switched. Friend of mine just came to my office to report yet *another* full re-install of WinXP is required on his test machine because ... 'something has gone wrong with the USB driver updates'.

    Can he figure it out? No. Is he stupid? No. Does Microsoft suck at designing OS's that make sense? Yes.
    • Not to burst the ol' Machead bubble, but let's be realistic. Any OS can have problems. I've been using a Mac since the Fat Mac, and have never personally owned a Win box, but I love the platform in spite of its problems, not because it has none.

      I updated 3 machines (BW G3, Pismo, iBook) to 10.2.4. Two went fine, the iBook gray screened at the OF prompt and I had to reload and reupdate the bitch from scratch, which took 4 hours. I was not feeling the Mac love on that one. And the XP box I use at work has be
      • Yeah, I'd have to agree. I used to bitch about XP's instability, but then I found out that I had installed with a DVD drive that liked to randomly corrupt things. Go figure.

        I do like being able to have 30+ day uptimes, though. =)
      • Well, you don't, but I do.

        I've invested in every single generation of PC since the 8088 days. I've only recently decided to go Mac-only on the personal level, though I do still maintain plenty of servers.

        I'm completely multi-platform friendly, having owned SGI boxes, Sun, PC's, Wang, you name it. I don't care, at this point, about anything but stability and predictability in operational status.

        Something you just don't get with Microsoft: predictability in operational status and procedure.

        Cheap crack i

    • Re:Holy smokin' joes... (Score:5, Funny)

      by sweet reason ( 16681 ) <mbloore AT yahoo DOT com> on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @01:24PM (#5545045) Homepage
      Can he figure it out? No. Is he stupid? No. Does Microsoft suck at designing OS's that make sense? Yes.

      does a corporate IT exec want a platform that makes his department large and indispensible? yes. does MS know its market? yes.
      • Nice generalization. As a "Corp IT exec," I can say that I would love to be on a reliable, secure, easily supportable personal computer environment... *that supports our applications*. Microsoft did a great job of marketing to developers in the early 90's (that's you guys) so now we are limited in our choices. Suggestion: show more developers how to build great end user applications that are platform independent, or multiplatform capable with minimal effort. How: 1. Pure HTML apps with ECMAscript (that jav
        • Another option: Stick to plain C, open API's, POSIX where possible.
        • Nice generalization. As a "Corp IT exec," I can say...

          My apologies, that comment was offhand and poorly stated. By "corporate IT exec" I really meant someone who is resonsible for systems maintenance, rather than system development, and the phrase I chose didn't say that. Of course, even perfect clarity would have left me insulting many a consciencious manager.

          My comment was really meant as a joke, and a comment on corporate politics and empire-building, rather than the real work that IT departments a
      • Ummm, you could do something like this just as easily in Windows, if someone developed something to implement it. You can't compare the strength of the two OSes and their APIs based on this, as no one has any idea how complex Apple's implementation was. Apple is just better at hiding hairy details than MS.
    • What would you have to do to do something like this in Windows land?

      1. Sweep Dell off desk onto floor.
      2. Call Apple.
      3. Order Powerbook.
    • What would you have to do to do something like this in Windows land? Some sort of .DLL monkeybusiness? Registry hacking?

      You've got excellent PDF support on any general purpose Linux distro.

      I can't figure out exactly why you'd want a "PDF and Email" option. I mean, I'm sure that there are a few people that might want this, but it seems that it's not that common of an application.
      • I can't figure out exactly why you'd want a "PDF and Email" option.

        It beats "attach Word/Excel/[other proprietary format]", which is far too common now. (Of course, even better would be "paste plain text into email", which would do the job 99% of the time, but his lets people send decorative messages without viruses/missing fonts/text reflow.

  • more info on (Score:4, Informative)

    by cyman777 ( 631050 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:14AM (#5543402)
    http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030 214080306398&query=pdf

    OS X makes many things comfortable. Could not believe a 9 times reboot to update win2000 to the latest service packs and progs. But furtunately I am running in only for testing reasons in virtual pc so my work does not stop during rebooting in a OS X window ;-)
    • Could not believe a 9 times reboot to update win2000 to the latest service packs and progs.?

      Huh? I just installed SP2 on a win2k laptop. It asked me to reboot once. I don't know where you got the 9 times from, but that is not my experience. Not even in the days of NT4

      Please, if you want to say that MacOSX is better than Windows, say so on its merits not by inventing problems with Windows.

      • I meant updating from SP2 to SP3 with all bells and whistles took 9 reboots (including new media player, .net framework, security updates) - that is what I meant with "progs".

        The problem was, that it had to install several updates _seperately_ which is insane, because I had to reboot after each one. Try it yourself.

        I am not inventing problems with windows, but I find it annoying that it always gives you the attitude that its (=the computer's, window's) time is more important than a human being's time!

  • Two different approaches (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kruetz ( 642175 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:15AM (#5543409) Journal
    Really, is it a surprise that Apple continues to survive in the MS-dominated world? Look at the "innovations" from Microsoft - Media Center, DRM, Windows Update (damn, you need IE for that), ... nothing really to make most users say "geez, that IS useful. cool!"

    Now look at Apple - "you mean I can now automatically do basically anything with this PDF I'm about to print? Damn, that sounds really useful. I'll be able to get this done way quicker and have more time for X" (see here [akamai.net])

    BTW, MS has VBA, which can be used to do all sorts of shit on your PC, like Outlook viruses, Word viruses, etc, but Apple's AppleScript seems to be relatively secure whilst still providing enough functionality (see the bottom of this [apple.com]). Although perhaps it's because Apple's marketshare isn't seen as big enough for virus-writers to really take notice - I don't know.

    Okay, that's not exactly a rock-solid proof, but I think it does illustrate the orthogonal directions Apple and MS seem to be taking - MS wants more and more control of what you do with your computer (eg, WM8 or 9 or whatever they're up to), while Apple introduces features like the aforementioned that are actually somewhat useful. They also make changes when their users whinge (eg, some of the stuff they put in Jaguar to satisfy old-skool Mac fans).

    Perhaps this is just part of Apple and Steve Jobs being 'cool', but it sure makes sense in the OS industry. I'm almost at the stage where I'd consider going MacOSX (with X11) when I next upgrade (at least a year from now, though)
    • Adobe Acrobat. (Remember they have something to do with PDFs.)

      Any application I use I simply print to PDF. My company uses ActivePDF [activepdf.com] to populate forms for our clients. As soon as I can do this in Linux or OS X (preferably Linux) for free I'll switch. Till then it's crappy IIS and Active PDF.

      I hate Windows and all but everything is released for Windows. Where Mac and Linux usually have to wait to see if something is coming to their platform (if ever).

      I guess it's time to start my own OSS project for popul

    • AppleScript (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      AppleScript is not secure, it simply is not so frequently exploited.

      - Anonymous Coward
    • BTW, MS has VBA, which can be used to do all sorts of shit on your PC, like Outlook viruses, Word viruses, etc, but Apple's AppleScript seems to be relatively secure whilst still providing enough functionality (see the bottom of this [apple.com]). Although perhaps it's because Apple's marketshare isn't seen as big enough for virus-writers to really take notice - I don't know.

      It's mostly about market share. In OS 9 you pretty much were limited to conventional trojans because you can't really conceal the fa
  • You can give it to all users on the machine by putting it in /Library instead of ~/Library
    • You can give it to all users on the machine by putting it in /Library instead of ~/Library

      Okay, I'm an idiot. It only works if there is a ~/Library/PDF Services.

      BUT - If you have it in both places, you see double entries in the print dialog. I guess this is probably one of the reasons it isn't documented yet.

  • Apple gets it... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by peterdaly ( 123554 ) <{petedaly} {at} {ix.netcom.com}> on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @09:23AM (#5543445)
    I have had my Yao laptop for about 3 weeks now, after not having a Mac since system 8 had just come out.

    While I think it has some neat features, other people around me are dumbfounded that I can print anything into PDF. PDF -> Mail is something that QuickBooks/Mac has been missing. Not that I use that feature of Quickbooks, but maybe that is something they left out knowing this was coming.

    Does anyone have an sites where I can find scripts that do these things?

    BTW - I entertained people in meeting for about 5 minutes yesterday with my "YaoBook"...taking requests to minimize and maximize windows, just so they could watch the gennie effect into and out of the dock. Wow. Apple really hit the marketing bullseye with that otherwise useless feature.

    -Pete

    • do those things (Score:3, Informative)

      by djupedal ( 584558 )
      Use the 'net, Luke... [apple.com]

    • Re:Apple gets it... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mbbac ( 568880 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @10:13AM (#5543753)
      It isn't really useless. It gives visual feedback to what actually happens to the window when you click on the minimize widget. There are two other minimize effects, by the way. Only two of the three are exposed through the GUI.

    • Re:Apple gets it... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rhetland ( 259464 )
      BTW - I entertained people in meeting for about 5 minutes yesterday with my "YaoBook"...taking requests to minimize and maximize windows, just so they could watch the gennie effect into and out of the dock. Wow. Apple really hit the marketing bullseye with that otherwise useless feature.

      This may be a slight bit off the main topic, but you can slow down the genie effect by shift-clicking the yellow minimize button. This is very annoying for all-the-time use, but it impresses the hell out of non-mac peop
    • Hold the shift key when clicking on the minimize/maximize button, and the effect is shown in slow motion. Same for opening a folder...
  • great idea, almost makes me want to use OSX.
    its a good thing we have nautilus scripts [sourceforge.net]
  • is the fact the you cannot add the stuff in /Library/PDF Services (well you can, but it won't work). Did anybody else notice this. This is strange as usually you can choose to put stuff either in /Library, /Network/Library or ~/Library.

    Anyhow, while this trick is cool (I use it to mail pdf files in one move) I hope we will soon have free tools that are equivalent to the classic Unix stuff for postscripts: putting multiple pages on one page, reordering pages, etc...

    • Re:One strange thing (Score:4, Informative)

      by Mikey-San ( 582838 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @10:03AM (#5543693) Homepage Journal
      Ah, but you can.

      Create both "/Library/PDF Services" and "~/Library/PDF Services". Populate "/Library/PDF Services" with whatever you like. Those items should now appear in all users' Print dialogs.

      It seems that you need the folder at the user level to get this to work.

      -/-
      • Perhaps this may actually be the way OS X functions; A Library folder must have an equivalent instance in the ~/Library folder to be active. It would reflect an object-oriented nature of the OS, and would allow for relatively easy overrides of preferences or any setting (and this seems to be the case). The root:Library is global and sets the defaults, while the user:Library overrides the defaults. Not having the folder, means the User does not get the functionality at all. Anybody want to test this? It woul
        • That makes perfect sense. Especially if you didn't want to give all users on the computer access to be able to send PDF's by email. In order to give someone the permission to do so, they have to have a ~/Library/Pdf* folder. Of course a user could add it themselves, unless otherwise specified. I am guessing that this feature may not be completely documented, and the front end configuration for it hasn't been finished, but they let it out anyway. (same reason they had samba "working" in 10.1, it just wasn't
  • I had to revert to 10.2.3 on account of the modem bug. :( Unfortunate, because that was my only problem with the update. Apple is reportedly fixing this in 10.2.5. Anyway, This is a cool feature and I will definitely use when Apple fixes 10.2.4's modem bug.

    • Re:Wish I could run 10.2.4... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If you check either Macfixit or Macintouch (I forget which), there's an app somebody put together to replace the modem files in 10.2.4 with the working ones from a previous version. You might give it a try, see if it fixes your connection problems.

  • visit the site! (Score:5, Informative)

    by funwithstuff ( 555638 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @10:04AM (#5543697) Homepage
    For more info on all sorts of techy Mac OS X stuff, just read www.macosxhints.com [macosxhints.com], where this hint came from. All free and sensible, with daily updates.

    Current stories include:
    Hiding information from nmap
    Accessing the 6BONE with OS X 10.2
    Automate screen captures via Grab and GUI Scripting
    Large image previews in column view
    Hear new Mail messages announced by customized voices
    Network proxies and internet access via AirPort
    Cocktail - A collection of mini-utilties in one app
    Restore Aqua look and feel in NetBeans 3.4 with Java 1.4.1
    Temporarily silence the startup sound
    Another USB to network printer conversion
    • Or better yet, add Mac OS X Hints as a Slashbox [slashdot.org].
    • The only thing with that site is that mixed in with the gems you come across, there's also a lot of really bad advice given.

      Just to go with my personal pet peeve, I have yet to ever encounter a good reason for an average OSX user to enable the root account, nevermind log in and noodle around as root. Not when sudo is available. And yet a large fraction of the tips given go something like:

      1. turn on the root account, if you haven't already
      2. log out and log back in again as root
      3. run this command: $foo
      4. log back

  • Services (Score:5, Informative)

    by transient ( 232842 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @10:06AM (#5543711)

    People might want to check out the Services menu as well (it's a submenu of the application menu). It contains services offered by other applications that any application can take advantage of. Among other things, it includes a menu item to send the current document in an email.

    I think the Services menu is one of the most underrated and underutilized features in Mac OS X.

    • Yeah, Services is one of the coolest things about Mac OS X (and NeXT). I consider it a pre-cursor to Web Services. Services are like Web Services except they work for different applications on a computer depending on the data type they are operating on.
      • I disagree. I think that Services is more like the pipe, but for GUI land. Web services is just a name for stuff that has been going on for a long time over the network. The name 'Web Services' refers to services that run over ftp or rsync, for example, making the term innacurate.

        Anyway, the Services menu is the shit. Mine has like 30 entries. Translation, anybody (or ROT13)? Text to speech of a long article while I'm cooking?

        I can only imagine how badly Microsoft will fuck this concept up once they
      • Services is somehting that hasn't worked for me yet. I'm running 3 mac with 10.2.4, and none of them will let me use any services. They are always grayed out. What am I missing?
    • I think the Services menu is one of the most underrated and underutilized features in Mac OS X.

      I agree, but it can be quite cumbersome to navigate. Also, it'd be great if you could access it from the contextual menus. Anyone know how to add this?
    • I couldnt agree more. Services are very immature on OSX but will surely evolve into one of those things we just take for granted. The ability to have a nifty little "Applescript convert PDF to text and email that file to _X_" systemwide script always waiting for your command (in a clean GUI manner) is to me amazing . As the Finder and other key apps move to the cocoa enviroment (where services are much more intergrated and shared with negligable extra work on the programmers side) this technology will real

  • More PDF Workflow Coverage (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are links to other PDF Workflow discussions here. [allosx.com]
  • I don't want to be a wet blanket but this function, while very cool, lacks the ability to name the outgoing document. It gets the moniker 'print job.pdf' and unless someone can figure out a way via scripting (perhaps to wrap the application?) this is a little non-descriptive. Will be interested to watch the progress though!
    • ... lacks the ability to name the outgoing document. It gets the moniker 'print job.pdf'...

      i just did a quick test, sending a pdf from TextEdit to a folder by selecting a pdf service. the document was "Untitled 4", and the file created was "Untitled 4.pdf". perhaps there are other application/service combos that have a naming problem.

    • Re:seems a little early for primetime (Score:5, Informative)

      by CaptCosmic ( 323617 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @02:40PM (#5545792) Homepage
      If you want to rename the PDF file, you can write an AppleScript which prompts you for a name (and possibly a location) to put the file.

      I have written an AppleScript which saves the current page into my ~/Documents/Recipts folder. One of the things it does is prompt you to name the PDF before it is saved into the receipts folder.


      on open these_items
      repeat with i from 1 to the count of these_items
      set this_file to item i of these_items
      set new_name to ""
      display dialog "Enter Name for this Receipt:" default answer the new_name buttons {"Cancel", "OK"} default button 2
      copy the result as list to {new_name, button_pressed}
      if button_pressed is not "Cancel" then
      do shell script "cp " & quoted form of POSIX path of this_file & " ~/Documents/Receipts/" & quoted form of new_name & ".pdf"
      beep
      end if
      end repeat
      end open

  • Great for on-line, not so for offset printing. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nycroft ( 653728 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @12:39PM (#5544662) Homepage
    I think it's awesome that Apple is always innovating and improving the awesome OS X. The ability to automatically generate PDFs and use different scripts to regulate their behavior is a great testament to Apple's undying commitment to making user's lives easier. Publishing PDfs for on-line useage will probably become more efficient as the user writes more scripts. However, this seems like it would not be very helpful for those involved in offset printing.

    At most pre-press shops around the world, PDFs are becoming integrated into the workflow more and more. But most prfessional design programs already have their own print dialogs and methods for exporting PDFs. Take Adobe InDesign, for instance. I can already export a PDF from the File menu (though I cannot see how to regulate it with all those cool Applescripts). And why would I want to do that anyway? If I send anything to a pre-press dept. at a print shop, it will most likely be a fully separated PDF, or (in most cases) a Postscript file. Many pre-press shops cannot deal with composite PDFs yet. A lot of them are not equipped with a fully PDF workflow. That would make trapping and imposition from a composite PDF quite difficult.

    Other software titles that professionals use like Quark, PageMaker, etc. already have their own print dialogs. A high-res PDF of a four-color print job would be too large to attach to most e-mails anyway.

    I like the idea for every other usage. This new option is great for titles like Word which use the Apple print dialog. This can have many advantages. Students will most likely benefit from this as they will be able to publish their PDFs on-line to professors and teachers.
    • Right. Is there some AppleScriptable method for converting an otherwise worthless composite PDF to a prepress ready color separated PDF?

      If so, write the script, throw it in the directory, and any application can produce those PDFs nice and easy-like.

      I, personally, don't do anything with PDFs so regularly as to need this feature. I would imagine that folks with established graphics workflows (such as yourself) would be the ones to benefit from this sort of thing. Maybe I'm wrong.
      • Well, like I said all the tools for generating a high-res PDF from a professional design title like InDesign are in its own print dialog. I would imagine that one could create a "hot" folder whereby an Applescript would be invoked whenever a Postscript file was saved directly into it: it could automatically distill it and move it wherever you like. Still, as far as attaching to e-mails and whatnot: the separated PDFs of a distilled Postscript file for an average 150lpi four-color offset print job are pretty

  • Wonder if this is a pot-shot at Distiller? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thatguywhoiam ( 524290 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @01:07PM (#5544843)
    Regarding the Quark fiasco, and Adobe Distiller.

    Prepress designers know that the Quark/Distiller combo is basically how you get stuff done, for the most part, in recent years. However, Quark is muchos late with their application, and Adobe has yet to mention Distiller for OS X, even though they've ported pretty much everything else.

    The rumour mill has it that Adobe is holding back - or possibly has cancelled - Distiller for OS X, just to give InDesign a shot in the arm (which has Distiller-like capabilities built in of course).

    Also, it's possible that Adobe is still miffed by any of the following:

    - the knifing of Adobe Premiere by Final Cut
    - the competition for photo-management via iPhoto (notice no Adobe Album for OS X. Too bad, looks nice.)
    - the non-licensing of Display PostScript for OS X (which I believe has been nothing but a good decision for Apple; Quartz is a milestone in 2D graphics display systems, and has many advantages over old-school DP, not the least of which is support for true transparency)

    Makes you wonder if Apple is stepping up yet again to fill the void *cough*safari*cough*

    • thatguywhoiam said:
      > the non-licensing of Display PostScript for OS X

      Adobe backed out of their promise to provide (first a free, then a low-cost) DPS license for Apple---this is why Apple did away with ``Yellow Box'' and came up with their Mac OS X strategy.

      Adobe also had a history of yanking the chains of people who'd bought DPS licenses---like resolution limiting it to less than 800dpi when NeXTstep 3 came out.

      For a decent alternative to Distiller for most purposes, look at Frank Siegert's spiffy pS
    • " The rumour mill has it that Adobe is holding back - or possibly has cancelled - Distiller for OS X...."

      Could somebody puh-leeze ask the rumor mill what the heck Distiller is doing in my recently installed OS X Acrobat 5.05 directory?

  • No printer selected bug? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Kjoules ( 47188 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @02:57PM (#5545972)
    I didn't see this in the Apple discussions, and I'm not sure whether this is a bug, but PDF workflows do not work if there is no printer installed in the print dialog. Otherwise, all options (except for the default "Save as PDF...") will cause a print error.

    The workaround was to add a printer (regardless if you have one or not). I wonder if anyone has also experienced this problem.
  • Slightly off-topic, but related...

    If you're interested in drawing PDFs from code, a nice OS X application is AquaTerm (http://aquaterm.sourceforge.net/). It has C bindings, so you can write a C program to create lines & text. AquaTerm displays the lines & text and allows you to display & print (to PDF) the results.

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