QuickLook doesn't work with docx files

[atanasj]

QuickLook xpi doesn't work with docx files. Works fine with pdf and pptx.

ZoteroQuickLook 1.3.2
Zotero 5.0.38
macOS 10.13.3
Word 16.10

Please let me know if you need any more info. Thanks for a great plugin!

[bwiernik]

I'm not able to replicate this. Are you able to QuickLook .docx files in Finder?

[atanasj]

Yes I am. Is there anything else you suggest I do, or other information you may need to help debug this issue?

[bwiernik]

First update to the most recent versions of Zotero, ZoteroQuickLook, and Word and confirm that the error is still present.

[atanasj]

So, after updating to the following versions:

ZoteroQuickLook 1.3.3
Zotero 5.0.45
Word 16.2

The verdict is:

I do get popup image. From a performance perspective, loading a pdf via ZoteroQuickLook takes <1 second, whereas loading a docx (see first screenshot below) takes ~20 seconds. I did not ever wait before for this long, so I may have got the same type of popup before. However, ZoteroQuickLook does not work as I would expect with docx. On the pdf files, ZoteroQuickLook can scroll through the document (see second screenshot below), but for docx, only a thumbnail of the first page is produced. When viewing a docx via the Mac Finder, the native quicklook functionality provides a way to scroll through the document.

Please let me if you need more info. Thanks for your help.

[bwiernik]

Okay, I can replicate the same behavior on a Mac. It seems to be a consequence of using the qlmanage utility to access QuickLook from Zotero. qlmanage is a utility for testing quicklook functions, and it looks like it doesn't work correctly with .docx files (as well as several other file types). I don't know whether this behavior was always present or whether it is new in High Sierra.

I tried some debugging with qlmanage to try to get it to work, but couldn't. The issue isn't present when I use ZQL on Windows with the QuickLook program. So this is an issue with the utility used to show quicklook previews on Mac.

I am not sure whether it's fixable without writing a full-blown QuickLook implementation into Zotero, which likely won't happen until Zotero migrates to the Electron platform, which has native QuickLook support.

[bwiernik]

It might be possible to at least get ZQL to skip over non-PDF files to avoid the delay in the unhelpful quicklook window popping up.

[atanasj]

Thanks for your response.

Sounds like it's best / easiest to just be aware of the issue, and then wait for Zotero to migrate to Electron.

It's not that big a deal really, as I don't have that many docx files to manage. I'm happy to live with it.

Not sure what your process is about closing/managing this issue... I'll leave it up to you.

Thanks once again for an awesome package!