Sometimes it’s very convenient to share the exact changes in a body of text with a coworker who doesn’t have Kaleidoscope. Generating a PDF of a text comparison is a great way of doing that.
Printing had been a longstanding request and was added to Kaleidoscope in version 3.4, we even wrote a blog post about it. With it came the ability to export PDF files. There are two standard ways to export a PDF file on macOS, but you should really use the function named Print.
Use Print instead of Export as PDF
While the File > Export as PDF… command works perfectly fine, it is a bit limited, both in usability and the capabilities it offers.
In order to make any adjustments, you need to click Show Details. And even then, you only get to choose Paper Size and Orientation in addition to the parameters provided by Kaleidoscope.
Going through the Print command instead, you get several immediately obvious benefits:
- There’s a proper live preview on the left, giving you an idea how text will flow in the resulting PDF.
- Clicking the Page x of y bubbles on the preview, you can exclude pages from your PDF.
- Control several additional features, like color output.
- Arrange multiple pages on a sheet.
- Add a watermark
- Use Printing Workflows, yet anther forgotten feature of macOS.
- Open in Preview before your final export
Next time you want to share changes in a text file with someone, remember that Kaleidoscope has the ability to export PDF files. And do remember to select File > Print… for added benefits.
