sid
nospam wrote:

nospam
In article <1889530.nBcg46vEp2@thecrap.blueyonder.co.uk>, sid <sidney@sidshouse.net>wrote:

ray carter
In the past, I've found dcraw useful to get a quick look at things by extracting the jpeg thumbnail (dcraw -e).

nospam
once again, more work than needed. on a mac, there's no need to run anything (especially using a command line). a simple tap of the space bar gives a quick look of nearly any file (photos, pdfs, spreadsheets, zip files and much more), which is why it's called quick look.

sid
So how does quick look know which file you would like to see?

nospam
the ones you have selected. obviously.

sid
Selected where?

nospam
in finder.

sid
Oh, you mean the file manager, that you ran by clicking the finder icon in the dock

you must be running something to be able to see files to select.

nospam
finder is part of the operating system. it's always running. it's 'the desktop'. users don't 'run' finder.

sid
It's an app that's autostarted when you log in. It lives at /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app

notice the .app at the end.

That's not some sort of file manager you are running is it? And what do you think happens when you tap the spacebar? It runs some viewing software, so that's 2 things you've run.

nospam
first of all, there are dozens of processes running, without the user having to run them manually, including finder. tapping the space bar is just another keystroke interpreted by finder. it does not run a second app.

sid
So you are running the first app then?

nospam
as far as the user is concerned, they click on one or more files, tap the space bar and see the contents for nearly any file type. photos are shown as photos, movies play in a window, spreadsheets are shown as spreadsheets, etc.

sid
I'm not talking about "as far as the user is concerned". You said you don't have to run anything to have a preview display. I'm saying you do.

All of this is pointless, I'm just trying to point out that your mac isn't some wonder machine that can do loads of things no one else can, it's just a computer and works like other computers. It's not magic.