Previewing AI, PSD, PDF files

Davey_D · Post by *Davey_D » 2015-12-15, 23:42 UTC

Hi all,
I've been using TC for about 6 years now, but just joined this forum.
I wanted to be able to preview .ai, .psd, .pdf files in TC (.indd would also be awesome!)
I found this topic somewhere in this forum (can't insert URL since this is my first post), but that suggestion did not work for me.

Here is what I did:

I have TC 64 bit installed
I installed irfanView 64 bit
I pointed TC to my Iview file n configuration > Edit/View
Opened the configuration file and added to the lister section the following IviewAdditionalTypes=*.ai *.psd *.pdf
Closed TC and restarted

I still only see raw text and not the real preview

Can anyone guide me how to achieve this?
Thanks,
Davey

milo1012 · Post by *milo1012 » 2015-12-16, 00:09 UTC

When it comes to PDF, IrfanView is quite cumbersome to set up (judging from my own experience).
Additionally, when using it with the TC lister, it would load (any) images by using the (quite slow) Windows clipboard.

Therefore I suggest using dedicated plug-ins for viewing such files.
Take a look at this thread for recommended viewer plug-ins.

Davey_D · Post by *Davey_D » 2015-12-16, 00:13 UTC

Hi Milo, thanks for your response
I looked at that thread - I see what you're saying....
I wanted to download uLister and Sumatra as you suggested, however, I see sumatra is only in 32bit, and I am running 64

What can I do?

Thanks,
Davey

milo1012 · Post by *milo1012 » 2015-12-16, 00:19 UTC

You mean the "Sumatra PDF based plugin"?
You will only need it for Thumbnail view of PDF files.
I compiled it for x64 some time ago, see this thread.

Davey_D · Post by *Davey_D » 2015-12-16, 00:21 UTC

Great! Thanks a lot
I will try those out now.

What about AI, PSD, INDD? Any suggestions?

milo1012 · Post by *milo1012 » 2015-12-16, 00:28 UTC

Davey_D wrote:What about AI, PSD, INDD?

ulLister will view/preview AI and PSD quite well, just like Imagine will render most PSD files, and the old Sumatra plug-in also view some AI files (if they are based on PDF).

As for INDD: if you mean Adobe InDesign files, some seem to work with sLister, some not (probably depending on the format version).
I'm not aware of any other plug-in that would view them.

Davey_D · Post by *Davey_D » 2015-12-16, 00:30 UTC

Ok, awesome
Thanks a lot for your clear informative help - much appreciated
I am downloading everything now...

Actually, just realized - am I downloading uLister or sLister or both?

Thanks,
Davey

milo1012 · Post by *milo1012 » 2015-12-16, 00:34 UTC

Davey_D wrote:Actually, just realized - am I downloading uLister or sLister or both?

As I stated in the thread:
I recommend using sLister for PDF, and uLister for anything else (except images, where I recommend Imagine/IrvanView et.al.),
but you can use uLister only for basically everything. It can be quite slow though, and is quite cumbersome to install.
So it's your choice.

Davey_D · Post by *Davey_D » 2015-12-16, 00:36 UTC

Got it! - Thanks again!

Davey

Davey_D · Post by *Davey_D » 2015-12-16, 01:44 UTC

I can't seem to get anything to work
I installed uLister first (and the oracle viewer package), but I still wasnt able to preview ai or pdf files (the only 2 i tried)
I added to wincmd.ini the following lines:

Code: Select all

[ListerPlugins]
0=C:\Programs\totalcmd\plugins\wlx\wlx64_uLister_4.0.0\ulister.wlx64
0_detect="EXT="ai" | EXT="psd""

but it still didnt work

Then, I installed sLister, and updated the wincmd.ini as such:

Code: Select all

[ListerPlugins]
0=C:\Programs\totalcmd\plugins\wlx\wlx64_sLister_1.1.2\slister.wlx64
0_detect="EXT="PDF""
1=C:\Programs\totalcmd\plugins\wlx\wlx64_uLister_4.0.0\ulister.wlx64
1_detect="EXT="ai" | EXT="psd""

But at this point, every time I tried previewing any file, TC crashed!

I verified that all plugins were 64bit to match my TC
Am I doing something wrong?

Please advise
Thanks,
Davey

milo1012 · Post by *milo1012 » 2015-12-16, 09:44 UTC

First of all you should not directly alter the detection string, unless it is necessary (which isn't the case most of the time).
I wonder what made you think that you need to do that on your own.

As for uLister, you don't need any detection string, because the plug-in decides on it's own if it can use/view a file.
You just set up the plug-in priority by moving a plug-in to the top in TC's wlx plug-in configuration (top plug-ins will be tried before ones being lower in the list).
You can still use another plug-in by pressing "4" again when having a lister window open, so you could switch for e.g. viewing a PDF file between sLister and uLister, due to this mechanism.
So just remove that detection string entry.

For the uLister config you have the ulister.ini file, where you can exclude the formats for which you want to use different plug-ins.
See https://docs.oracle.com/outsidein/852/supportdocs/ds_oitfiles_8_5_2.pdf for the supported formats, and the "formats.txt" for the numbering scheme.
(you can see the added format numbers in the w-8-5-2-win-x86-64.zip\sdk\common\sccfi.h file, as the "formats.txt" file is quite outdated)

Concerning the non-working uLister:
for the x64 version, make sure you have:

installed the plug-in file from wlx64_uLister_4.0.0.zip
downloaded vw-8-5-2-win-x86-64.zip from this page
and copied all files from the "redist" dir to the directory where ulister.wlx64 is installed (either all files directly, or keep them in that sub-dir)
the Visual C++ 2005 x64 runtimes installed
maybe modified the ulister.ini to exclude certain file formats

Also make sure that the plug-in priority doesn't interfere with different plug-ins (drag it to a top/high position in the plug-in list).

For sLister:
Just leave the default detection string.
If you have a recent version of Sumatra PDF, you might want to modify it to:

Code: Select all

"MULTIMEDIA& (EXT="PDF" | EXT="DJVU" | EXT="DJV"| EXT="XPS" | EXT="CBZ" | EXT="CBR" | EXT="EPUB" )"

Davey_D · Post by *Davey_D » 2015-12-16, 20:32 UTC

Hi Milo, thanks again for helping

First of all you should not directly alter the detection string, unless it is necessary (which isn't the case most of the time).
I wonder what made you think that you need to do that on your own.

I don't really know - just a little browsing on this site made me believe that I was supposed to do that. I will revert it.

I am not sure what I did, but: uLister now seems to be working well. It displays pdf files and ai files (although the ai files are not displayed well)

Regarding sLister:
Ok, I uninstalled and reinstalled sLister, and the detect string was returned to default. I added your addition of EPUB.
However, whenever I try to use it (e.g., by pressing 4 key) TC crashes totally! any other troubleshooting I can try?

And a general question:
I have IrfanView installed and TC is setup to use it.

1. Is this conflicting with uLister?
2. Which one had preference?
3. Which one is preferred for various images?
4. How to configure as such?

Thanks again - a lot!
Davey

milo1012 · Post by *milo1012 » 2015-12-17, 00:10 UTC

Davey_D wrote:I have IrfanView installed and TC is setup to use it.
1. Is this conflicting with uLister?
2. Which one had preference?
3. Which one is preferred for various images?
4. How to configure as such?

If you mean the setup in the Lister config, then:
1: It doesn't, you can cycle through plug-ins and IrfanView with the "4" key
You can see that a plugin is used for rendering, if you see "Lister (plugin name)" in the Lister window caption (top left corner),
otherwise only "Lister" is shown.

2: a plug-in will always load first by default, but there is an option in the Lister config to disable plugins
I don't think that you can configure individual file type's preference, but you can use the Ini option "IviewAdditionalTypes="

3 and 4: Like I explained above:
Every plugin in your wlx list is tried, from top to bottom, either by checking the detect string, or, if there is no such string, by trying to let the plugin load the file anyway.
If that fails, the plugin will return an error and TC tries the next plugin in the list, and so on.
If no plugin is able to handle a file, TC will try to render the file itself.
Now, if the file in focus is an image file, and if you have IrfanView/XNView configured, TC will use that program for any image type that it cannot render on it's own, and show you the Multimedia View by default.
If no such program is configured, TC will show you the raw text view for files it cannot render.

As I said, using IrfanView/XNView with that Lister config is quite slow and not really comfortable to use IMO.
I recommend the Imagine plugin for all common Image formats, and uLister for the remaining ("exotic") ones.
You can do that by modifying the ulister.ini file (put the common image type ID codes in the noloadtypes= key).

Davey_D wrote:However, whenever I try to use it (e.g., by pressing 4 key) TC crashes totally! any other troubleshooting I can try?

What's the crash report saying?
And most important: which version of SumatraPDF are you using?
I assume that you are aware of the fact that sLister is merely calling SumatraPDF.exe in background.
You can simply update it by downloading the newest exe from http://www.sumatrapdfreader.org
So just try different versions.

Davey_D · Post by *Davey_D » 2015-12-17, 01:04 UTC

Ok, great. We're getting closer!

1. Understood. Thanks
2. Ok, plugins are tried first - understood. I don't understand what you wrote regarding IviewAdditionalTypes. Does this work to precede a plugin? If not, then what?
3. Great explanation! Thank you
4. I disabled IrfanView and downloaded and installed Imagine. It works great. I added a bunch of formats to the noloadtypes key.
5. I downloaded the latest version of sumatra and put it into the sLister directory - seems to work great now!

Some questions:

1. In uLister, what's the difference between noLoadTypes and noPreviewTypes?
2. My plugin setup now is 1: sLister, 2: Imagine, 3: uLister. Does this seem correct?
3. Jpeg files and png files have a blank white icon - is this normal in windows 10?
4. What's a good plugin for viewing video files .mp4, .avi, .wav?

Milo, thanks a ton, you really got me straightened out and going!
All the best
Davey

milo1012 · Post by *milo1012 » 2015-12-17, 01:21 UTC

Davey_D wrote:1. In uLister, what's the difference between noLoadTypes and noPreviewTypes?
2. My plugin setup now is 1: sLister, 2: Imagine, 3: uLister. Does this seem correct?
3. Jpeg files and png files have a blank white icon - is this normal in windows 10?
4. What's a good plugin for viewing video files .mp4, .avi, .wav?

1: noLoadType: prevent this file type to load in Lister/QuickView, noPreviewType: prevent this file type to show in the Thumbnail view in TC
2: it depends on your uLister setup (ulister.ini forbidden types)
As I said: If more than one plugin can render a file type, the wlx plugin list determines which plugin will be used after starting a Lister window.
So it's up to you (your personal preferences).
3: I don't know what plugin you use for these - Imagine?
In any case, try to clear/delete the thumbnail database file ("tcthumbs.idb")
4: Hard to say. All existing plugins depend on the installed system codecs.
Mmedia seems to work quite good.

Davey_D wrote:I don't understand what you wrote regarding IviewAdditionalTypes. Does this work to precede a plugin? If not, then what?

No. It's just for IrfanView, when you want to link certain file types that TC otherwise wouldn't know and wouldn't bother calling IrfanView for them, like e.g. .psd files.