4 ms·

Are PDFs really expected to preview in an image viewer though? I don't really think of them as images, so I see the flag to preview them as more of an "extra fe

Are PDFs really expected to preview in an image viewer though? I don't really think of them as images, so I see the flag to preview them as more of an "extra feature", which is exactly what flags are for. If it didn't preview GIFs without a flag, or PNGs, then your point would absolutely stand.

kijin 8y ago
Exactly. PDFs are documents, not images. Just because ImageMagick can convert PDFs into images doesn't make them images. Every image viewer on Earth excludes DOCs and PPTs by default, but nobody complains about that.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  I recall at least one vector drawing program offering PDF as target, and this being expected in some print shops, so yes, in some cases, PDFs can be images. PDF is a weird format with a bunch of disjoint use cases.
  - a1369209993 8y ago
    GIMP offers ASCII art as a target, and that's expected by line printers/teletypewriters; does that mean TXTs can be images?
    - jchw 8y ago
      Yeah, you just described how too. KDE used to thumbnail txt files with a portion of their actual text.
      - bmn__ 8y ago
        Still does. Dolphin → Settings → Configure Dolphin… → General → Previews
        jchw 8y ago
        I see; I mostly used KDE in the 3.x days, back when Konqueror was the file manager and Webkit was still a fairly young KHTML fork.
        bmn__ 8y ago
        Konqueror and Dolphin use the same kpart under the hood for directory display. Konqueror → Settings → Configure Konqueror… → File Management → General → Previews leads to the same configuration dialog.
    - laumars 8y ago
      That’s a weird edge case. It’s images to us nerds and hackers but it’s certainly not images to anyone in print. Where as PDFs were used to send final magazine pages (for example) which were ready for print. (Source: I worked for a publishing company in the 90s)
- laumars 8y ago
  I think the reason for that is more to do with history than anything. The original intended purpose of PDFs were to be a print quality final layout. That’s not so much the case these days and Word documents / PowerPoint presentations have supported embedding fonts too so they’ve drifted a little into PDFs territory. But from a generalised and historic standpoint: Word documents were for editing and PDFs were for printing.
tempay 8y ago
In my experience of academia, using PDFs as an image format is extremely common for sharing plotted data. The only common alternatives are (E)PS and PNG which are much worse.
goliatone 8y ago
You can use PDFs in Xcode. Instead of using a single image for all the different resolutions and polluting your fs is actually really nice to have a single file with preview

kijin 8y ago

Exactly. PDFs are documents, not images. Just because ImageMagick can convert PDFs into images doesn't make them images. Every image viewer on Earth excludes DOCs and PPTs by default, but nobody complains about that.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
TeMPOraL 8y ago
I recall at least one vector drawing program offering PDF as target, and this being expected in some print shops, so yes, in some cases, PDFs can be images. PDF is a weird format with a bunch of disjoint use cases.
- a1369209993 8y ago
  GIMP offers ASCII art as a target, and that's expected by line printers/teletypewriters; does that mean TXTs can be images?
  - jchw 8y ago
    Yeah, you just described how too. KDE used to thumbnail txt files with a portion of their actual text.
    - bmn__ 8y ago
      Still does. Dolphin → Settings → Configure Dolphin… → General → Previews
      - jchw 8y ago
        I see; I mostly used KDE in the 3.x days, back when Konqueror was the file manager and Webkit was still a fairly young KHTML fork.
        bmn__ 8y ago
        Konqueror and Dolphin use the same kpart under the hood for directory display. Konqueror → Settings → Configure Konqueror… → File Management → General → Previews leads to the same configuration dialog.
  - laumars 8y ago
    That’s a weird edge case. It’s images to us nerds and hackers but it’s certainly not images to anyone in print. Where as PDFs were used to send final magazine pages (for example) which were ready for print. (Source: I worked for a publishing company in the 90s)
laumars 8y ago
I think the reason for that is more to do with history than anything. The original intended purpose of PDFs were to be a print quality final layout. That’s not so much the case these days and Word documents / PowerPoint presentations have supported embedding fonts too so they’ve drifted a little into PDFs territory. But from a generalised and historic standpoint: Word documents were for editing and PDFs were for printing.

tempay 8y ago

In my experience of academia, using PDFs as an image format is extremely common for sharing plotted data. The only common alternatives are (E)PS and PNG which are much worse.

goliatone 8y ago

You can use PDFs in Xcode. Instead of using a single image for all the different resolutions and polluting your fs is actually really nice to have a single file with preview