Re: OS X question about Apple's Preview

[Arjan Bos]

On 7 dec 2006, at 21:33, Trevor Bača wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Not a direct Lily question, but useful nonetheless:
>
> Any OS X folks know how to tell Apple's Preview application -- from
> the commandline -- to close foo.pdf (but leave other pdfs open, ie,
> without actually killing the Preview process)?

The most obvious way would be to use Applescript, unfortunately,  
Applescript isn't supported by Preview.app. But macworld.com has the  
solution: <http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macosxhints/2006/10/ 
previewscript/index.php>

Here they turn on Applescript from the command line with:
defaults write /Applications/Preview.app/Contents/Info  
NSAppleScriptEnabled -bool YES

And then you can close a window with:

tell application "Preview"
    close window 1
end tell

I have not yet used it, but presumably, every OS update that also  
updates Preview.app will override this setting back to the default.

Some quick experimenting results in:

tell application "Preview"
        repeat with i from 1 to number of windows
                set current_window to item i of windows
                set current_name to name of the document of the current_window
                if current_name is "AdemVanEeuwigheid.pdf" then
                        close window i
                        exit repeat
                end if
        end repeat
end tell

Where AdemVanEeuwigheid.pdf is a pdf of a lilypond score.

Perhaps you can make this into a folder action that executes on the  
directory where your pdfs are created in?


HTH,
Arjan

---
They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant  
than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things.

-- Discworld scientists at work  (Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites)