Quick Look select text

DEVONthink Tips
1

I recently upgraded to Mountain Lion.

One of my favorite tweaks from Lion has been lost, namely, the ability to select and copy text from Quick Look.

There is a simple Terminal command to enable this, which I performed. If I Quick Look a file in DTPO, I can no longer select text. However, if I drag the same file to Finder, I can select text from Quick Look.

Any thoughts? I really miss this feature!

2

What type of file were you trying?

3

Thanks, Korm.

I tried it on pdf+text files. As I mentioned, in DTPO it doesn’t work, but it does work after dragging the same file to a finder window.

Weird, isn’t it?

Is Quick Look always a part of the finder, or is there a component of it that depends on DT? When I use the contextual menu for a file that shows this weird behavior, then select ‘Show in Finder,’ the file in Finder behaves as expected. But not the file in the DT DB.

I’m stumped!

4

Next step-I opened Console, selected All Messages, then hit Clear Display.

I then tried to use QL in DTPO (hit spacebar; tried to select text, but just dragged the window; hit spacebar), and fortunately got three error messages:

7/31/12 9:46:38.408 PM DEVONthink Pro[281]: [QL] QLError(): -[QLPreviewPanel setDataSource:] called while the panel has no controller - Fix this or this will raise soon.
See comments in QLPreviewPanel.h for -acceptsPreviewPanelControl:/-beginPreviewPanelControl:/-endPreviewPanelControl:.
7/31/12 9:46:38.408 PM DEVONthink Pro[281]: [QL] QLError(): -[QLPreviewPanel reloadData] called while the panel has no controller - Fix this or this will raise soon.
See comments in QLPreviewPanel.h for -acceptsPreviewPanelControl:/-beginPreviewPanelControl:/-endPreviewPanelControl:.
7/31/12 9:46:38.409 PM DEVONthink Pro[281]: [QL] QLError(): -[QLPreviewPanel setDelegate:] called while the panel has no controller - Fix this or this will raise soon.
See comments in QLPreviewPanel.h for -acceptsPreviewPanelControl:/-beginPreviewPanelControl:/-endPreviewPanelControl:.

Unfortunately, I have no freakin’ idea what it means!

I hope this is helpful…

5

.

6

The next release will support this (actually for the first time).

7

Thank you.

8

Actually, I found a solution!

I had been using a terminal command to change the default for Finder:

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection -bool TRUE; killall Finder

Then I used it for Mail:

defaults write com.apple.mail QLEnableTextSelection -bool TRUE; killall Finder

But then I found a variant which works for all applications:

defaults write -g QLEnableTextSelection -bool TRUE

And now this cool trick works in DTPO!

I highly recommend it. Search in DT, select the file, spacebar to get Quick Look, and then just select the text you want. A great time saver in combo with DT’s search function.

9

This is a really cool trick-thanks for posting the Terminal command for it. I believe the enhancements to QuickLook on Mountain Lion alone are worth the price of the upgrade. With the new gestures to pinch/zoom, the menu commands to share documents, and now this tip are great. The only downside is that my markdown QLMarkdown.qlgenerator viewer appears to be broken with the upgrade.