[External] macOS Ventura (13) Preview App Drops Support for PS/EPS File Rendering

Have you considered ps2pdf?
 

On Oct 26, 2022, at 10:11, Marc Schwartz via R-SIG-Mac  

wrote:

Hi Prof. Ripley,

Thanks for your reply. Responses inline below.

On October 25, 2022 at 11:11:43 PM, Prof Brian Ripley (ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk) wrote:  

Somehow you sent HTML only, and that renders oddly in Thunderbird.

My apologies on that.

That is curious and I now see that in looking at the raw message content. I am not sure how  

that occurred, as I had set the e-mail to plain text when composing, so somehow that changed  
at some point. What is even more confusing, is that by default, had the e-mail been initially  
composed as HTML/RTF, it would normally be sent as multipart MIME, which does not appear  
to have been the case here, leaving me even more confused.

I am sending this now as plain text, so hopefully that is what is sent. I will keep track  

and if that is not the case, report a bug.

Have you considered GhostScript? That used to be my viewer of choice
for Postscript long ago. I think TeXShop may be a wrapper.

Yes, TeXShop is a GUI front-end previewer as you note below, included in the macTeX distribution,  

using underlying functionality. Ghostscript 9.55 is also installed as part of macTeX,  
which I have installed as I still heavily use Sweave to generate PDF reports for clients,  
some of which use pstricks to generate flow chart figures. Thus, the included figure  
content is generated as PDF and PS/EPS files, which I sometimes quickly preview, until  
now, using macOS Preview.

There is some coverage now of this change in Preview in various Mac fora, with some hypothesizing  

that this change in Preview may be security related, pointing to a change by Microsoft  
in Office back in 2017/2018:

https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.microsoft.com%2Fen-us%2Foffice%2Fsupport-for-eps-images-has-been-turned-off-in-office-a069d664-4bcf-415e-a1b5-cbb0c334a840&data=05%7C01%7Crmh%40temple.edu%7C78ef812c421947a3942608dab75c0425%7C716e81efb52244738e3110bd02ccf6e5%7C0%7C0%7C638023903602892347%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=TbOX5KoROWOLe%2BTAx3EN0rSDVwIp%2BbRwaQDhqSBJIz0%3D&reserved=0  

Of course, nothing official from Apple that I have seen.

My box has Photoshop as the default viewer for .eps and TeXShop for .ps.
I almost never use Photoshop: it comes as part of Adobe's
Photographers Bundle.

I also have the full Adobe Acrobat application installed, as I have other functionality  

provided by that app that I need, so pay for that as a business expense.

It is interesting that now that I am trying to open some PS/EPS files with apps other than  

Preview, if I use TeXShop, the file opens right away, whereas if I use Acrobat, I get a security  
pop-up asking me if I trust the source that generated the file, which in this case, is me.  
Perhaps Apple could take a similar approach with Preview, if security was the motivation  
for this change, and they elect to revert it.

This was more of a heads up for folks, who like me, have been dependent upon using Preview  

for a quick look at these files, which are commonly generated using R.

Thanks and regards,

Marc

Brian

On 26/10/2022 01:06, Marc Schwartz via R-SIG-Mac wrote:

Hi All,

Having updated to macOS Ventura, I just became aware that Ventura's
Preview app has dropped support for rendering PS and EPS files after all
these years.

Not clear on the rationale for this change, but there is an Apple
Support article here on this:

https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.apple.com%2Fen-us%2FHT213250&data=05%7C01%7Crmh%40temple.edu%7C78ef812c421947a3942608dab75c0425%7C716e81efb52244738e3110bd02ccf6e5%7C0%7C0%7C638023903603048577%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=YSoEWtjrSTW53AM9wF80GPHY%2BWz%2FxJIfJDykhrDW%2B%2B8%3D&reserved=0  

Apparently, one can still print these files by dragging and dropping
them on to the printer queue, but you will need to find a different
application, such as the TeXShop app, which is bundled in macTeX for
free, or another option is the full Adobe Acrobat Pro application, if
you have and pay for that.

If you are so inclined, you can provide product feedback to Apple here:

https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.apple.com%2Ffeedback%2Fmacos.html&data=05%7C01%7Crmh%40temple.edu%7C78ef812c421947a3942608dab75c0425%7C716e81efb52244738e3110bd02ccf6e5%7C0%7C0%7C638023903603048577%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=JytUqQ28oLpcg5IkxE1deFl29tKPkRELVRkDVEye2NY%3D&reserved=0  

Regards,

Marc Schwartz

--
Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford