how can I view or open an eps file with macOS Ventura?

Replying to myself....

Well, I have tried now, and Preview does not want to open eps files as it used to.

However, the longtime mac free pdf application Skim does it, and TeXShop does it too.

This tells me that the underlying PDFKit still has these capabilities (inherited for free by these two long term great Mac applications, and probably others).

Somehow, Preview no longer supports it - I am not sure if this was intentional, or not.

Even using control-click, Open With, Preview does not appear as one of the choices (TeXShop and Skim do).

From the link leroy posted…

"The Preview app included with your Mac supports PostScript (.ps) and Encapsulated PostScript (.eps) files in macOS Monterey or earlier. Starting with macOS Ventura, Preview no longer supports these files. Other apps that can view or convert .ps and .eps files are available from the App Store and elsewhere."

The underlying pstopdf UNIX command is still available in macOS Ventura. Just launch the macOS Terminal Application. pstopdf is super fast and easy to run. Coders can use pstopdf to convert a whole set of files at once.

Here's the man page. (If you know UNIX you'll know how to interpret this information.)

pstopdf(1)                  General Commands Manual                 pstopdf(1)

NAME
     pstopdf – convert PostScript input into a PDF document.

SYNOPSIS
     pstopdf [inputfile] [-o outname] [-l] [-p]

DESCRIPTION
     pstopdf is a tool to convert PostScript input data into a PDF document.
     The input data may come from a file or may be read from stdin. The PDF
     document is always written to a file. The name of the output PDF file is
     derived from the name of the input file or may be explicitly named using
     the -o option.

     Flags:

     -o outname
             The name of the output file to create. If an explicit file name
             is not supplied, the output file will be created in the current
             directory and named foo.pdf for an input file named foo.ps

     -l      Specifies that any messages generated during file conversion be
             written to a log file. For an output file named foo.pdf the
             generated log file is foo.pdf.log rather than generated to
             stdout. If there are no messages, the log file is not generated.

     -p      Generates a simple progress message to stdout at the end of each
             page. Because conversion of complex or lengthy PostScript input
             can take time, it is sometimes useful to see that progress is
             being made. Progress messages are always written to stdout even
             when the -l (log file) option is specified.

EXAMPLES
     pstopdf inputfile.ps       Creates a PDF file named inputfile.pdf from
                                the PostScript data in the input file
                                inputfile.ps

     pstopdf -o outputfilename  Creates a PDF file named outputfilename from
                                the PostScript data read from stdin.

Apple Computer, Inc.            Sun Mar 16 2003           Apple Computer, Inc.

klaus-peter260 wrote:

how can I view or open an eps file with macOS Ventura?

See if there is anything here—

View .ps and .eps files on Mac - Apple Support

Thanks.

I have not had a chance to try it yet, but doesn't it work as before? Up to and including Monterey, you could just double-click on an eps file, and a converted pdf version of it would open in Preview.

Luis Sequeira1 wrote:

This tells me that the underlying PDFKit still has these capabilities

It does.

somehow, Preview no longer supports it - I am not sure if this was intentional, or not.

It must have been. It is one thing to remove something and hope no one noticed, but Apple documented it. They meant it.

Thank you for mentioning "Skim"! It definitely gets the job done and then some.

Years ago I started using 'xfig' to create some drawings, and while it is a bit dated, it still works, and is free. It only outputs PostScript or Encapsulated PostScript files. I can send these directly to the printer, bit it's nice to be able to preview them before using ink and paper. I used to simply open these in Preview, and am sad to hear that is going away. Skim to the rescue!

You're welcome.