Mac Series: Reduce PDF File Size in Preview

zpjet has posted a very good article reproduce below:



I was never satisfied with results of "Reduce File Size" Quartz filter when trying to make some PDFs smaller before sending them by e-mail. It made them too small, and the graphics were fuzzy.

I eventually found where these filters are:

/System/Library/Filters

I was delighted to find out they're XML files easily editable with TextEdit (or any other text editor). I also found why this particular filter makes quite unusable PDFs, as these parameters were just too low:

Compression Quality 0.0
ImageSizeMax 512

So I copied this file to my Desktop, and then made two more copies of it, and called them Reduce File Size Good, Better and Best. Then I changed the parameters of each file to 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75 for Compression Quality, and used these three values for ImageSizeMax:

842 (that's A4 at 72dpi)
1684 (A4 at 144dpi)
3508 (A4 at 300dpi)

Finally, I changed the default string for the Name key at the end of each file to reflect the three settings, so they display the names I have given them in the menu.

Then I copied them to a /Library/Filters folder I created (for some reason, ~/Library/Filters doesn't work in Lion) and now when I open a picture or PDF in Preview, I have the option of four different qualities for reduced file sizes.

As an example, I have a JPEG of scanned A4 invoice at 300dpi and it's 1.6MB. When exporting to PDF in reduced size, the file is only 27 KB and it's quite unusable - very fuzzy and hard to read. The Good one is much easier to read, slightly fuzzy and still only 80 KB. Better is 420 KB and clear, and the Best is 600 KB and almost as good as the original even on a laser printer.

[kirkmc adds: Interesting hint. I see this as useful only for creating PDFs from files. If I'm scanning something, and I don't want the file to be too big, I'll either scan it at a lower resolution, or change the resolution in an image editor before making a PDF.]

Windows Series: Directory or Junctions?

When you created a "Junction", it will behave like you have all the files in that particular folder. However, the files actually located at other place (target folder).

There is no way to know whether the folder you look at is a "directory" or a "junction" using the windows explorer. There are alternatives however to differentiate them.

One way is by using the "Command Prompt".

Steps:

1) Change the directory to the folder/directory of interest
2) dir /a to list all directory/junctions
3) dir /al /s to list all directory/junctions in the directory or subdirectories

Thanks to [source]

Windows Series: Junction

I worked across Windows-OS X, and several PC's...
Thus, I use dropbox to store my files; files anywhere across PC's and OS. ...

Using normal shortcut is not an option. Because OS X uses different kind of shortcut called alias which will not work on Windows. Similarly Windows uses .lnk (shell links) that will not work on OS X. On different PCs, the dropbox is installed on different drives (i.e. on PC1 E:\Dropbox, on PC2 F:\Dropbox) which will affect the shortcut created. It will not be accessible in PC2 if the shortcut created in PC1.

One of the solution is using "JUNCTION" which solved the problem that I've been facing across multiple PC/OS.

Steps:

1) Run Command Prompt as administrator

2) mklink[space]/J[space]"link"[space]"target" (i.e. mklink[space]/J[space]"F:\Dropbox\TEACHING\SESI_2016-2017\ENT310_220\ASSESSMENTjunction"[space] "F:\Dropbox\UniMAP\TEACHING\MASTERFOLDER\ENT310_220\ASSESSMENT") 

Thanks to [source]

MS Word Series: Bold Caption Label & Number But Not The Caption Text

This macro is intended to BOLD the CAPTION LABEL & NUMBER but not the caption title.

Sub CaptionBoldNot()
'
' CaptionBoldNot Macro
'
'
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
With ActiveDocument.Range
  With .Find
    .ClearFormatting
    .Text = ""
    .Style = "Caption"
    .Replacement.Text = ""
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindStop
    .Format = True
    .MatchCase = False
    .MatchWholeWord = False
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
    .Execute
  End With
  Do While .Find.Found
    With .Paragraphs.Last.Range.Duplicate
      .End = .Start + Len(Split(.Text, " ")(0)) + 1
      .MoveEndUntil " ", wdForward
      .Style = "Strong"
    End With
    .Collapse wdCollapseEnd
    .Find.Execute
  Loop
End With
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

Thanks to the original author. 

MS Office Series: Equation/Math Font

The article here lists out the fonts available that look much better than Cambria Math.

In summary, three other nice fonts that work with Microsoft Office’s new Equation Editor (these are compatible with Office 2007 or later):

• XITS Math is somewhat compatible with Times (download here).
• Asana Math is compatible with Palatino (download here) and if you don’t have Palatino, you can download it here, among other places
• Latin Modern is the LaTeX font of choice. There is a math font (download here) and a whole family of text fonts (download here). Note: these may not look good on screen, but they look just perfect when printed.