macOS Ventura: finder's file preview less powerful?

The discussion on this thread seems to be missing the point. A *.tex file is just an ordinary text file (plain ASCII, as we used to say),

and it can be read with any text editor or code editor: BBEdit, TextMate, Alpha, even TextEdit, as well as typesetting programs like TeXStudio to TeXShop. The problem is that Ventura no longer assigns text-file status to the *.tex extension, so QuickLook gets confused. A quick-and-dirty workaround is the append one letter to the extension, making it a *.text file, and the QuickLook preview appears at once; but then one needs to change back to *.tex so that the code editors know what to do with the file contents. Even more alarming is that Markdown files, with an *.md extension, cannot be read by QuickLook either. This is clearly an operating system problem: what is needed is to put back *.tex and *.md (and *.bbl, while we're at it) to the list of recognized text-file extensions. Any chance of that?

hildebrands5 wrote:

Sorry, follow-up. I downloaded BBEdit as well to see whether it works -- it doesn't.

Your screenshot clearly shows that it does work. There is content in the upper left corner of the image. You are simply trying to show a file that is 14 bytes long. How long is 14 bytes? Shorter than the sentence that asks how long it is.

jvarilly wrote:

The discussion on this thread seems to be missing the point. A *.tex file is just an ordinary text file (plain ASCII, as we used to say),

and it can be read with any text editor or code editor: BBEdit, TextMate, Alpha, even TextEdit, as well as typesetting programs like TeXStudio to TeXShop. The problem is that Ventura no longer assigns text-file status to the *.tex extension, so QuickLook gets confused.

There is no problem. Ventura works the same was as all previous versions. Every screenshot in this thread shows it working properly.

Even more alarming is that Markdown files, with an *.md extension, cannot be read by QuickLook either. This is clearly an operating system problem

Markdown is a junk file format for developers who can’t do basic HTML. I have yet to see a single tool that can display it. The state of the art is to convert it to HTML and then display the HTML in a web browser.

If you want a decent Markdown preview, all you need to do is write one. The fame and fortune of the QuickLook developer is just sitting there waiting for you to seize it. Carpe QuickLook!

hildebrands5 wrote:

ok here you go with a larger file -- same issue.

It's not the same issue. If you want to have a substantive discussion about issues, you have to start with valid data.

I'm sorry, but you just have to - no options.

I'm not convinced that it's about that. If I change the ending to *.text instead of *.tex, it recognise the "correct" programme to generate the QuickLook.

OK. Working as designed, or as hacked, as the case may be.

What I mean with the Tips app is that QuickLook seems to try to open *.tex files with it, as you can see on the screenshot.

QuickLook does offer a button to open the document using whatever app the system selects, of you have chosen, as the default app for this type of file, or this particular file. This app is also what is providing the preview. If that preview is wrong, then you have to contact the developer of said app and ask them to fix it. The operating system has absolutely nothing to do with it in this case.

If this were the case of a JPEG file, or maybe an EPS file, something that the operating system was handling, then it would be a question for the operating system. But macOS never handled tex files so there was never anything for it to do. It is your responsibility to download, and maintain through upgrades or new downloads, a tool that can open, and hopefully preview, your particular files. If texstudio can't handle it anymore, then you'll have to find something else.

Unfortunately, given the "free software" nature of tex, I predict that you will have a difficult time finding something that will work. That's just the nature of the modern world. Everybody wants to make a living, except open source developers. They just make a point to avoid supporting their free software on Macs. Maybe they could set you up with a nice Ubuntu system or something. I would be happy to write a tex preview for you, but I doubt you would be willing to pay what I would have to charge for the effort.

VikingOSX wrote:

On macOS Monterey and prior, I had a third-party QLMarkdown Quick Look extension stashed in my ~/Library/QuickLook folder and that addition showed me the content of the .tex files, or even XML structure. That third-party QLMarkdown tool quit working on Ventura and my .tex files now display the image of the .tex content in the displayed icon.

Those old QuickLook previews have been deprecated two times over now, maybe three. It has been several years since Apple stopped supporting the stand-alone plugins that you could just drop in the QuickLook folder. Then, Apple published a new QuickLook generator template a few years ago, but kept supporting the old format. Of course, no 3rd party developers, including myself, updated to the new format. So then, Apple tightened the screws. Xcode would crash if you built a release version of an app that included an old QuickLook plugin, but only on the 2nd attempt. That was quite annoying for a couple of years and I finally ripped out the QuickLook plugin altogether. The new architecture works well enough, but I haven't bothered to add a new QuickLook back into EtreCheck due to concerns about backwards compatibility for people still running 10.13.

If Apple has completely stopped running the old QuickLook format, that would explain why they dropped support for old formats like PS and EPS.

This is as good as it is going to get, as Apple does not support LaTeX/TeX source markup in Quick Look. I may be obtaining this view because I have the full MacTeX 2022 installation and it does provide some qlgenerators of its own. For the above QuickLook view, my default opening application was set to MacVim 9, but the same occurs with Sublime Text 4, TeXShop 5.0.3, or the current BBEdit. 14.6.1.

Those new QuickLook generators are easy enough to build. They do have to be bundled into an app. Just write a super-simple document-based app that can open Tex files. Then use the same logic in the QuickLook generator. For someone who can build a Mac app and cares about Tex support, it should only take a couple of hours.

The extension com.apple.tips.TipsAppQuicklook-macOS does not implement file previews

I think that message is a side effect of the TextMate app.

I don't believe I have ever had TextMate, and I get that error on .css files. I don't get the error for .tex files, but BBEdit handles those. I also have BBEdit set to open css files, but it doesn't generate the quicklook for those.

I have downloaded and tried many text editors, so it is entirely possible I installed and deleted TextMate, but all the others are still on my Mac. I tried setting several of them to default open css, but none added any quicklook capability.

For what it's worth, I also have BBedit installed, and I get the same

com.apple.tips.TipsAppQuicklook-macOS does not implement file previews

message for *.css files, an "Open with BBedit" button, and a generic TEXT-labelled BBedit icon (with no thumbnail preview).

Barney-15E wrote:

I don't believe I have ever had TextMate, and I get that error on .css files.

If my theory about how that happens is valid, then it could happen with literally any app that creates a new UTI based on "public.text". I didn't see it until I tried to reproduce this problem.

Quicklook, or really any kind of system plugin that screws around with file types, can get the system confused. Developers shouldn't even attempt it unless they are testing in a VM. Otherwise, once the system gets confused, the hapless developer might finally figure it out, but then not notice that they've got it right because the system is all scrambled.

I'm still safe because I tested this on my Ventura test machine. Being a Mac developer, I'm not going to switch my production system to Ventura until March or April at earliest.

Pipe_luque wrote:

so I'm not sure what your gaining from being here.

Let's set expectations then. You aren't here to substantively contribute anything to the question at hand. You are only here to attack me personally. Gotcha!

A preview/quickview of a file with nothing is not, in fact, nothing, it is a file with nothing in it. See for example this completely empty file (0 bytes, so even shorter than a sentence!):

and when I press the space bar I get the following quickview

First of all, the technology in question here is "QuickLook", not "QuickView".

Secondly, what you are referring to is a fallback display. Long before QuickLook even existed, the only way to display an icon for an app's document type was using a hard-coded icon defined in the app's resources. That document icon is still there and is sometimes used when a custom document type has no QuickLook generator or when a QuickLook preview would make no sense for a given document type. It can also appear when the QuickLook preview generation fails for whatever reason. One good reason would be a corrupt or empty file.

especially given your lack of knowledge of how TeX files behaved in previous versions of macOS, you're 100% wrong.

I'm confident that I've objectively demonstrated my knowledge of how QuickLook has developed over the years and how it works today. Furthermore, I'm confident that I have fully described not only the cause of this problem, but even it's ultimate solution. What more do you want?

Are you demanding that I develop TeX QuickLook preview that functions properly on Ventura just for the use of a handful of people still stuck in 1988? I actually did that for EPS files because I just happen to have a bunch of EPS files from 1988. I considered writing something more extensive for PS files when Apple removed support for PS and EPS in Preview, but several of the example Ghostscript files wouldn't render, so I didn't want to deal with that. To be clear though, I did write the app. It's just for me only. 😄

If the developers of your existing TeX apps are unwilling to update their apps to work property with Ventura, I would certainly consider publishing a TeX preview app. I could even write a full-fledged editing suite if you want. But you would have to pay for it. And since it is such a tiny, tiny market, you would have to pay for the entire development up front. Maybe try a GoFundMe with other people in a similar predicament? I'll even make it open source if you want. I think I'd probably have to. Just so you know, it won't be cheap.

One reason why many of suspect that there is a bug lurking somewhere are the pointers to

com.apple.tips.TipsAppQuicklook-macOS

in the quicklook message dialog for a variety of file types (css as well as tex). It's certainly possible that plugin architecture has changed in Ventura (i.e., previously deprecated features have been removed) and so things that used to work should no longer do so. However, this message appears to be sufficiently cryptic and misleading that it implicates a bug somewhere.

[Edited by Moderator]

a.jaffe wrote:

Not fixed in 13.1, alas. Any other updates?

Of course not. It wasn't ever broken.

This app seems to work as a quicklook previewer for a wide variety of file types, including TeX and CSS. (Thanks to this answer on the related TeX.SE thread.)

Did you test that app? I don't see any claims that it renders TeX files. It just displays the code, albeit with a bit more colour than TextEdit does. How well does it handle 14 byte and zero byte files. That's the real test.

I don't see any claims that it renders TeX files. It just displays the code

Aha.

We have obviously been talking completely passed one another. I never wanted rendered TeX — I just wanted quicklook of the source! Prior to Ventura, this was successfully handled by some application, perhaps TextMate. In Ventura (on my machine at least) the "icon preview" for *.tex files still correctly showed a snippet of the source, but the "quicklook window" preview -- which used to show the source -- subsequently just showed the dialog at the top, including the (at best misleading, but possibly buggy and broken) "tipsAppQuicklook" message.

But this app seems to provide exactly that source code preview (it's actually overkill -- I was very happy with whatever quicklook provider was successfully giving previews of most of my C, python, Julia, etc, source files prior to and since Ventura). Of course, this works just fine for empty and 14-byte files, since they are proper, if boring, source code.

This is what I wanted, and what I am nearly certain the other participants on this thread wanted as well.

I haven't reposted to this thread in a while because, as etresoft hinted, I had nothing productive to say. But thanks to etresoft's acerbic comments, I understand that the common problem of us TeX users has no good fix in Ventura. And no, I'm not a developer, I'm an end-user of TeX and Latex since 1986, and greatly appreciate code editors that use plain ascii (or unicode, nowadays), hence my mention of md files. The kludge I originally suggested, of briefly changing *.tex to *.text (and back again), seems to be the best one can do. There was an early helpful comment by Barney-15E who linked to Apple's Quicklook description, where we read: "Note: The list of supported common file types may change between operating system releases". So, that's that; sorry.

a.jaffe wrote:

I never wanted rendered TeX — I just wanted quicklook of the source!

You wanted...what it always did?

Prior to Ventura, this was successfully handled by some application, perhaps TextMate.

Anno Ventura too.

This is what I wanted, and what I am nearly certain the other participants on this thread wanted as well.

That's what's so confusing. You, and everybody else in this thread, wants exactly what Ventura does and every version of macOS has always done.