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When you split an article in pieces on a blog, they appear in reversed order, so it's not a great idea. A summary helps: Useless Introduction Using Metadata Presentations Generated by the Computer Large Previews To be honest, I have not described all the details. I feel I have been pedant enough. There is another trick yet. If you select multiple items, the preview window shows additional controls. Without explaining everything, here is the picture:

In this fourth and final part of the article, we'll discover the flexibility of the metadata system. For example, let's say you don't like the slideshow. A single picture is enough. You want, however, to inspect the metada. In the second part we learned that the command "Get Info" satisfies this need. The new command "Quick Look" can generate a different representation. It shows the same information (more or less), with an HTML layout and much larger fonts. In other words, it's more readable: There is also the opposite way of doing things. Let's say that you want to see your list of files in text form, without icons and thumbnails, without the coverflow effect, but you want to see the preview of your files nonetheless. Here again the "Quick Look" command comes to the rescue. It opens a glassy, dark-grey window, that acts as an ispector. When you select a file, the preview window shows the internal pages. You can use the scrollbar (or th...

In the second part of this article we saw the coverflow effect. In this third part we'll see what happens when we move the mouse near to one of the thumbnails. Two arrow controls appear. They let us browse the internal pages of a document. In the case of a spectrum, the pages can correspond to some important details or to user comments. Alternatively the user may choose to change the display mode. In our example, the integrals are shown on the first page only, the peak frequencies on the second page only. In practice, the computer has automatically generated a slideshow presentation for you. This becomes very useful indeed when you want to browse your spectra of yesteryear, or when your boss asks you how are things going and you obviously have no time to prepare a PowerPoint presentation. If you click the above pictures you can see them at their natural size.

It's not easy to obtain the permission to show a nice spectrum. For this article I have downloaded a collection of spectra of a standard compound from the Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank . They are not very nice but can serve my purpose. I have also processed the spectra to highlight the relevant information. Now I'll show you what is visible after you close the processing application. All the snapshot are taken while working with the operative system. I have uploaded very large pictures, so you don't lose too much (you'll only lose the animation effects). The blog shows them at a reduced size, but if you click a picture, the full-size original appears. As a starting point, I have selected a file, without opening it; the command "Get Info" shows this panel: This is only moderately useful, because selecting a file is already a time-consuming operation (you have to navigate through the folder hierarchy). The good news is that the computer can find the sp...

For more than two years I have been describing application software ("the programs"), and not the operative systems. Sounds obvious? It isn't. I had noticed, in the past, the attempt of a couple of programs (namely the ACD suite and the "NMRnotebook") to substitute the operative system. What they do is to put all your NMR data into a monolithic archive. From that moment on you can't search your files into the normal directory tree: the application program manages everything, substituting for the system. Can they do it better? I have also seen the opposite phenomenon, that is the appearance of new operative systems that do every kind of things, up to the point to make you feeling that application programs are no more necessary. My preference goes to the latter trend, for a practical reason. When you are in troubles with an operative system, you can find a neighbor or relative that knows it well and that can help you. If you are at work, you can call the IT de...