Create PDFs with QuickLook

Word documents are good for editing, and better for converting to Kindle .mobi files, etc. But my academic workflow is built around PDFs, and I like using Skim for marking them up etc. I also hate having to fire up Word every time I just want a quick look at some document.

Turns out you can use QuickLook to generate PDFs from any format it knows how to preview (and you can add support for lot's of extra formats through plugins).

I got the inspiration from this post. Running

qlmanage -p -o outdirectory file

creates a directory called file.qlpreview, which contains a Preview.html, and perhaps some images. Then you can use wkhtmltopdf, which you have to install first (just download wkhtmltopdf-0.9.9-OS-X.i368, and move it to /usr/bin, or where you keep your binaries, and change the name to wkhtmltopdf.

All the script does is grab the currently selected file(s) in Finder, uses qlmanage to extract HTML files, modified the HTML file a little bit to look nicer, and runs wkhtmltopdf to convert it to a PDF. It then highlights the converted file in Finder.

The latest version of the code (not necessarily the one below) is on github in the file qlmanage-doc2pdf.rb. Use a keyboard shortcut program like Keyboard Maestro, or turn it into a service.

# encoding: UTF-8
# this script takes a doc file as input (or anything, really), and generates a PDF, using qlmanage and wkhtmltopdf
 
require 'appscript'
include Appscript
require 'cgi'
 
def do_pdf(path)
  arg = path
  puts path
  file = File.basename(path)
  `qlmanage -p -o /tmp "#{arg}"`
  if File.exists?("/tmp/#{file}.qlpreview/Preview.html")
    a = File.read("/tmp/#{file}.qlpreview/Preview.html") 
    b = a.gsub('<div class="PageStyle">',"").gsub('{background:#ACB2BB;}','')
    File.open("/tmp/qlmanage-doc2pdf-tmp.html","w") {|f| f << b}
    `wkhtmltopdf /tmp/qlmanage-doc2pdf-tmp.html "#{arg}.pdf"`
    app('Finder').reveal( MacTypes::FileURL.path(arg + ".pdf"))
  else
    `/usr/local/bin/growlnotify -t "Not able to convert to PDF" -m "Preview could not convert #{file}"`
  end
end
 
app('Finder').selection.get.each do |item|
  url =CGI::unescape(item.URL.get)
  do_pdf(url[16..-1])
end
`/usr/local/bin/growlnotify -m "Conversion complete"`