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I see a lot of cropped screenshots on support forums, when really it would be better if the poster took the screenshot of the whole window, and then just highli

I see a lot of cropped screenshots on support forums, when really it would be better if the poster took the screenshot of the whole window, and then just highlighted the area they are worried about with a red square (or if you are a StackOverflow user, a freehand red circle ;)). Often the answer lies outside the area the poster thinks is relevant and if one could see it immediately, it would save lots of questions and back and forth. That said, automatically annotated screenshots would be useful, or even better: if someone invents a screengrab tool that would semantically tag all parts of the image based on the data available so its not just a plain image. I.e. screengrab a GUI window and all the text displayed in that window could be added as metadata like titlebar/button/label text and then it becomes searchable. I guess it would need an API that the developer of the app would have to explicitly implement though for most useful results like debug state information...

vthriller 7y ago
Re: annotated screenshots, there once was a module that allowed making snapshots of GTK windows as PDFs: https://github.com/nomeata/gtk-vector-screenshot https://github.com/nomeata/gtk-vector-screenshot Edit: here it is in action, with selectable text: https://www.joachim-breitner.de/various/pdf_screenshot_3.pdf https://www.joachim-breitner.de/various/pdf_screenshot_3.pdf
- indentit 7y ago
  wow, that's awesome - thanks for sharing! :) I'm surprised it's not more popular though, but I guess it has remained undiscovered like it was for me until now, or it's simply not as useful to others as I would think. Maybe because not all apps are GTK3 apps, or people don't want pdf's because they can't be inlined on a issue ticket like plain old images can, for example?
  - vthriller 7y ago
    > people don't want pdf's because they can't be inlined on a issue ticket like plain old images can Well, this module can also produce SVGs, which, I guess, can be inlined in some issue trackers. But, aside from being GTK3-only, the main reason this sort of thing didn't become popular is simply due the fact that even JPEG screenshots are just good enough and get the job done. Virtually nobody has any need to search for text in older screenshots; selecting text—well, you can't copy-paste from most of real error windows, so you're going to re-type its content anyways; and nobody is bothered with other people's font sizes, aliasing preferences, JPEG artifacts or whatever.
    - johannes1234321 7y ago
      One Thing where SVG isn't good enough is around fonts - PDF can embed fonts needed, thus produce the "correct" result. SVG probably would pick a different fallback font, which can lead to trouble. Aside from that: jpeg with compression artifacts works well enough, so that even png, giving better quality, often isn't used by non-technical folks. And unrelated as an anecdote: The IT hotline at a bank where I once worked asked for screenshots as Word documents (my assumption: "everybody" knows Word and so teaching "press 'Print' on your keyboard and then paste into Word" is relatively reliable teachable via phone ... this went to some level where we as developers got screenshots of sessions containing customer info, where customer details were "hidden" using black bars from Word, which of course could have been removed easily)
- exikyut 7y ago
  I feel like this PDF is a portal to an alternate reality where something something Display PostScript something something something something. Wow. I want to click at the UI in the PDF :( it's not working :(
egdod 7y ago
iOS 13 allows for sending screenshots in PDF form.

vthriller 7y ago

Re: annotated screenshots, there once was a module that allowed making snapshots of GTK windows as PDFs: https://github.com/nomeata/gtk-vector-screenshot https://github.com/nomeata/gtk-vector-screenshot Edit: here it is in action, with selectable text: https://www.joachim-breitner.de/various/pdf_screenshot_3.pdf https://www.joachim-breitner.de/various/pdf_screenshot_3.pdf

indentit 7y ago
wow, that's awesome - thanks for sharing! :) I'm surprised it's not more popular though, but I guess it has remained undiscovered like it was for me until now, or it's simply not as useful to others as I would think. Maybe because not all apps are GTK3 apps, or people don't want pdf's because they can't be inlined on a issue ticket like plain old images can, for example?
- vthriller 7y ago
  > people don't want pdf's because they can't be inlined on a issue ticket like plain old images can Well, this module can also produce SVGs, which, I guess, can be inlined in some issue trackers. But, aside from being GTK3-only, the main reason this sort of thing didn't become popular is simply due the fact that even JPEG screenshots are just good enough and get the job done. Virtually nobody has any need to search for text in older screenshots; selecting text—well, you can't copy-paste from most of real error windows, so you're going to re-type its content anyways; and nobody is bothered with other people's font sizes, aliasing preferences, JPEG artifacts or whatever.
  - johannes1234321 7y ago
    One Thing where SVG isn't good enough is around fonts - PDF can embed fonts needed, thus produce the "correct" result. SVG probably would pick a different fallback font, which can lead to trouble. Aside from that: jpeg with compression artifacts works well enough, so that even png, giving better quality, often isn't used by non-technical folks. And unrelated as an anecdote: The IT hotline at a bank where I once worked asked for screenshots as Word documents (my assumption: "everybody" knows Word and so teaching "press 'Print' on your keyboard and then paste into Word" is relatively reliable teachable via phone ... this went to some level where we as developers got screenshots of sessions containing customer info, where customer details were "hidden" using black bars from Word, which of course could have been removed easily)
exikyut 7y ago
I feel like this PDF is a portal to an alternate reality where something something Display PostScript something something something something. Wow. I want to click at the UI in the PDF :( it's not working :(

egdod 7y ago

iOS 13 allows for sending screenshots in PDF form.