{"id":31062,"date":"2020-12-16T19:38:59","date_gmt":"2020-12-17T00:38:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=31062"},"modified":"2021-01-04T16:33:21","modified_gmt":"2021-01-04T21:33:21","slug":"preview-in-big-sur-destroying-pdfs-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/16\/preview-in-big-sur-destroying-pdfs-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Preview in Big Sur Destroying PDFs Again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/annoying.technology\/posts\/86f4ea27e4cd90d0\/\">Manuel Grabowski<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=25447830\">Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/annoying.technology\/posts\/86f4ea27e4cd90d0\/\">\n<p>In the lower half is the result after modifying (removed a blank page) and saving that same PDF in Preview.<\/p>\n<p>Hard to believe, but that&rsquo;s <a href=\"https:\/\/discourse.devontechnologies.com\/t\/odd-pdf-behavior\/21400\">not<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.documentsnap.com\/ocr-text-macos-sierra-preview\/\">the<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/discussions.apple.com\/thread\/8010687\">first<\/a> time Apple <a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/21\/more-macos-preview-pdf-trouble\/\">messed this up<\/a>. Sure, even Apple can&rsquo;t account for all use cases when changing complex stuff like internal PDF handling. But:<\/p>\n<ul><li>The iX500 is an insanely popular and common scanner<\/li><li>I don&rsquo;t know any OCR software that is more popular than ABBYY FineReader<\/li><li>macOS used to be the absolute best in class OS for dealing with PDFs by a <strong>long<\/strong> shot<\/li><li>IT HAPPENED BEFORE<\/li><\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>As with the <a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/21\/more-macos-preview-pdf-trouble\/\">macOS 10.12 bug<\/a>&mdash;was it not added to a regression test suite?&mdash;this doesn&rsquo;t affect all PDFs with text layers, apparently just those created by ABBY FineReader.<\/p>\n<p>As Grabowski says, PDF support on macOS used to be <em>great<\/em>, but I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s yet recovered from the rewrite five or so years ago. I&rsquo;m still seeing slow progressive rendering, intermittent glitches where pages go blank, and buggy scrolling. Big Sur did fix a Catalina regression that broke clickable links by truncating the URL.<\/p>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/14\/macos-11-1\/\">macOS 11.1<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/03\/21\/its-frustrating-that-preview-in-mojave-isnt-better\/\">It&rsquo;s Frustrating That Preview in Mojave Isn&rsquo;t Better<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/30\/fixing-pdfs-whose-pages-render-as-black-rectangles\/\">Fixing PDFs Whose Pages Render as Black Rectangles<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/03\/pdfkit-improves-somewhat-in-high-sierra\/\">PDFKit Improves Somewhat in High Sierra<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/09\/26\/macos-10-13-high-sierra-released\/\">macOS 10.13 High Sierra Released<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/21\/more-macos-preview-pdf-trouble\/\">More macOS Preview PDF Trouble<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/17\/scansnap-and-sierra-update\/\">ScanSnap and Sierra Update<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/21\/macos-10-12-sierra-notes\/\">macOS 10.12 Sierra Notes<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"preview-in-big-sur-destroying-pdfs-again-update-2021-01-04\">Update (2021-01-04): <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jonas_ribe\/status\/1339568229975470080\">Jonas M. Ribe<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jonas_ribe\/status\/1339568229975470080\">\n<p>I wouldn&rsquo;t put this on Big Sur. The bug has existed in some form since the PDFKit rewrite (Sierra). Fewer people run into it after Preview started doing incremental saves for some PDF operations (High Sierra?). Deleting a page in Preview still does a full save and can break text.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Manuel Grabowski (Hacker News): In the lower half is the result after modifying (removed a blank page) and saving that same PDF in Preview. Hard to believe, but that&rsquo;s not the first time Apple messed this up. Sure, even Apple can&rsquo;t account for all use cases when changing complex stuff like internal PDF handling. But: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2020-12-17T00:39:02Z","apple_news_api_id":"2c49a9bc-c595-4cef-8a30-27bbfa5d27c8","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2021-01-04T21:33:25Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/ALEmpvMWVTO-KMCe7-l0nyA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[621,131,952,1891,622,345,102],"class_list":["post-31062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-abby-finereader","tag-bug","tag-fujitsu-scansnap","tag-macos-11-0","tag-ocr","tag-pdf","tag-preview"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31062"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31224,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31062\/revisions\/31224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}