Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Zoom In While Quick Looking PDFs
If you're using Quick Look to view a PDF, you can zoom in on a page if using
a trackpad by making the pinch-to-expand gesture (that is, placing your finger
and thumb together on the trackpad and moving them apart; contracting
them again will zoom out). If you're using a mouse, you can hold down
OPTION
and scroll the mouse wheel up and down to zoom in and out (for what it's
worth, this also works with a trackpad—just hold
OPTION
and use two fingers
to scroll up and down in the usual way).
However, for reasons best known to Apple engineers, this works only with
PDFs and not with any other kind of file, such as images. If you use the pinch-
to-expand gesture with such files, you'll switch to full-screen mode instead.
Quick Look Files at the Command Prompt
You can use Quick Look at the command line to preview any file. What you'll
see is the same as what you would see if you select a file in Finder and hit
SPACE
or right-click it and select Quick Look.
Just use the
QLMANAGE-P
command, followed by the filename. For example, to
Quick Look the file
DISNEYLAND.JPG
from the command line, I'd type the following:
QLMANAGE -P DISNEYLAND.JPG
You can Quick Look any type of file: images, documents, PDFs, and so on.
Tip 181
Print via Drag and Drop
Wouldn't it be useful to be able to print a file instantly, without first having
to open it and then click File→Print? As you might expect, your Mac lets you
do just that. Open System Preferences (Apple menu→System Preferences)
and then click the Print & Scan entry. In the list of printers that appears on
the left, simply select a printer and drag and drop it to the desktop. This will
create a shortcut to the printer, which will probably be an icon-sized photo-
graph of your actual printer.
To instantly print any file, simply drag and drop a file on top of this new
shortcut.
Double-click the new icon to view the print queue.
