7 ms·

I hate screenshots of text

340 points by paulmooreparks 11mo ago

chzblck 11mo ago
just a dumb sales guy - but I assumed when people were asking about code they would always copy paste it. ... Is this really common?
- lutusp 11mo ago
  > ... Is this really common? Only among people who don't code. A non-coder doesn't know the difference between a block of code, and a picture of a block of code. A woman visits the studio of a famous artist. She says, "That woman is all distorted!" The artist replies, "Madam, that is not a woman, that is a picture of a woman."
  - paulmooreparks 11mo ago
    Sadly, I wrote this article about people who are coders, whom I would expect to know that I would prefer the text rather than a screenshot.
    - lutusp 11mo ago
      > ...I wrote this article about people who are coders ... Maybe vibe coders. :) People who have never been in the opposite predicament.
tcdent 11mo ago
This is essentially a solved problem. Whenever someone sends me a screenshot that contains any text information (tables, etc), I pass it to an LLM and it correctly interprets the content of it. On modern versions of macOS you can just select text in images relatively painlessly, too. Linux desktop users will get there one day.
- walt_grata 11mo ago
  Or just ask people not to send you data in useless formats. That way you don't have to burn an acre of trees to power it and you help someone be less difficult.
  - tcdent 11mo ago
    I'm sure they will send you well written, accurate documentation if you ask, too...
    - matt_kantor 11mo ago
      I'm absolutely sure they won't if you don't.
- recursive 11mo ago
  Another way it's solved is that clipboards work on text too.
- forgotpwd16 11mo ago
  As described in the article, it isn't just text being image but that, usually, the image is only a subset of the entire text. Yes, OCR can help find the file containing a code segment in your local codebase but issues such as, mentioned in the article, sending a random error line rather the entire log remain.
- anonzzzies 11mo ago
  Claude on Linux does it fine, so does cursor, codex, claude code, ollama etc. Not that I would use any of these for this; if someone sends me screenshot, it is relevant for me so I know where to find what is in it quite readily if needed at all.
ddxv 11mo ago
Agreed! The one that I really don't like is that social platforms promote / prefer screenshots of text. Search engines promote sites that link to themselves. All the good parts of URLs are missing. How often I see something interesting, just to realize it's a screenshot and I have to go dig around myself figuring out where it came from.
nippoo 11mo ago
Preview on Mac does automatic OCR. I'm sure other tools exist that are similarly friction-free on other platforms, but it took me under 5 seconds (drag the image from the webpage into my downloads folder, click on it, and then select the relevant snippet and CMD+C to copy it). I imagine I'd have similar frustrations if I couldn't copy-paste the text easily though!
pavon 11mo ago
I mostly see this in Teams, and I can't really blame the sender because Teams' support for code blocks is so horrible.
- excalibur 11mo ago
  When I see a text screenshot in Teams, it's typically a snippet of a conversation in a different Teams chat.
- paulmooreparks 11mo ago
  OP here. My current team uses MS Teams. I've been teaching my colleagues how to create code blocks in Teams (basically, teaching them Markdown). It's there, but it's not readily discoverable.
  - focom 11mo ago
    Teams has really poor code block compared to slack or any other tool. You can feel the arrogance of the Microsoft PM each time you paste code or paste text that randomly render as html. Somehow, slack still has a better text input compared to teams.
furyofantares 11mo ago
> I have to either very carefully type some of the code into a search box or (these days) get my coding agent to find the relevant module for me. What about just asking them what file that is?
bnj 11mo ago
I agree that screenshots of text that are cut off from essential context are enough to make me pull my hair out, it creates so much extra work— but the modern feature of automatic text recognition in screenshots and images that allows for copy and paste has been incredible. Along with indexing that allows it to be searched, regular screenshots have become one of the most robust and future proof ways for me to preserve context from my workspace. When I look back into archived screenshots it helps me to recapture all kinds of things that I wouldn’t have thought to explicitly record.
sen 11mo ago
The ability to highlight/copy/etc text on Macs/iOS these days is such a killer feature. I use it almost every day, both for copying/translating text in screenshots or taking photos of text to then copy it into my notes later (eg school notice boards or event posters etc).
- WorldPeas 11mo ago
  this. makes me wish more image viewers would ocr->png special field->have location-attached selectable text like a pdf
- ivewonyoung 11mo ago
  OneNote had this for a long time.
  - sumnole 11mo ago
    Aside from copying text from images, OneNote can also make text in images searchable.
    - spockz 11mo ago
      Spotlight, notes, and Photos also look at photos and return them in search result. Even going further where you can give a description and find it as well.
- sqrt_1 11mo ago
  Windows built-in snipping tool (shortcut Win + Shift + S) also has a text actions button to extract text.
  - vismit2000 11mo ago
    Or Powertoys does that even better: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/text-extractor https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/text-ext...
  - 11mo ago
wenderen 11mo ago
This article is a specific case of a more general piece of advice: ask questions well (provide context like clickable links, trim down your query to the minimal reproducible case, pose high-precision questions, etc.).
crazygringo 11mo ago
I disagree. I use screenshots all the time, because it: - Preserves the full 80 character width without line-wrapping, which destroys readability - Guarantees monospace, so tabular data doesn't get all misaligned - Preserves a good coding font, so it doesn't come out as some hairline-width Courier on the other end - Preserves syntax highlighting, very helpful Obviously if somebody needs a whole file or whole log, then send the whole thing as an attachment. But very often I'll still include a screenshot of the relevant part. With line numbers, it's not difficult to jump to the right part of the attached file. Screenshots are incredibly useful for keeping code and terminal output looking like code and terminal output, and not getting completely mangled in an e-mail or chat message being read on a mobile device or in a narrow column.
- bluedino 11mo ago
  > Preserves a good coding font, so it doesn't come out as some hairline-width Courier on the other end Let me introduce you to Putty users who never change the default font...
- johannes1234321 11mo ago
  Except it doesn't use my preferred font, not my don't size, not my colors and I can't copy parts of it as easily and then the stupid chat app scales the image for some reason ot another.
- riazrizvi 11mo ago
  Yeah. OP has an egocentric bias - it’s not the norm in the world of work sharing that you can faithfully reproduce the live/contextual environment of the sender given the raw string. (OP’s blog purports to be pertinent to freelance software development).
  - jahsome 11mo ago
    What about accessibility?
    - SpicyLemonZest 11mo ago
bluedino 11mo ago
I secretly enjoyed the lectures out people would get on StackOverflow when they did this.
conductr 11mo ago
My response is usually “need context”. No shame in making them fill in the gaps they created in the first place Nothing against screenshots unless they are lacking context
- kqcso 11mo ago
  Agreed. Sometimes context comes from more screen, not less. I receive a lot of cropped screenshots that show the “problem” but hide the surrounding context, and they often exclude things that would make a solution immediately clear from a shot of the full application window.
  - conductr 11mo ago
    Definitely true although my motive is more based on a principle of “don’t let people send me on a fishing trip”. I’m glad to help but people need to learn the proper way of asking without completely inconveniencing the other person
- dangus 11mo ago
  That's an obtuse and semi-rude response in itself. It's not hard to actually communicate. "Thanks for sending this over to me, can you please send me a link to the code segment from source control?" It's not hard to be polite and firm.
  - conductr 11mo ago
    If I don’t know you, sure. The source of this usually comes from a teammate via a chat app (slack, teams) or email. In that context, I’m telling them concisely “I don’t have enough information to help you”. Tell me more. Figure out how to ask for help in a better way. Conciseness shouldn’t be assumed as rude when you have a working relationship with the other person and it’s obtuse precisely because they need to fill in the gaps, not me. Me and my teammates regularly get by on one word responses. Nobody interprets it as rude, we’re all busy and don’t get our feathers in a bunch over this kind of stuff. If someone did, they’d need coaching not the other way around.
drewg123 11mo ago
I personally hate screenshots of kernel panics. Or anything else where you might be dealing with 64-bit hex addresses like "0xffffffff81b7ed80" Typing that from a picture is infinitely more error prone than just cut/paste.
- Hackbraten 11mo ago
  What if the kernel panic happens at boot time so you never get to access its dump?
  - drewg123 11mo ago
    I prefer serial consoles :)
deleted 11mo ago
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deleted 11mo ago
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nicodjimenez 11mo ago
Note that Mathpix Snip can quickly convert such screen shots to markdown code via keyboard shortcut. Disclaimer: I’m the founder.
romaniitedomum 11mo ago
Screenshots of text! Luxury! In my day, the screenshots were embedded in a Word document too. But I can't be the only one appalled at the suggestion to use an LLM to parse the text. The sheer, prodigious waste of computing power, just to round-trip text to an image and back to text, when what's really missing is a computer user interface that makes it as simple to send text or other snippets as it is to send screenshots.
- FabHK 11mo ago
  Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2116/ https://xkcd.com/2116/
- RedShift1 11mo ago
  It can get worse. People use their phones to send a literal photo of their screen. This happens almost daily in one of the programming discords I'm member of and it drives me crazy, these are supposed to be (future) programmers and they don't even know how to make a proper screenshot??
  - tonyedgecombe 11mo ago
    When I'd get that from a customer I knew I was in for a whole lot of pain.
- PeterStuer 11mo ago
  I knew an enterprise where Word documents were used as "folders" for Word documents. The "top" document would have a collection of files pasted in to them (the actual file objects, not just the file content).
gwbas1c 11mo ago
When I get these, there's usually enough context that I can find the actual text. That being said, I've had to twist some arms in a previous job for new employees attaching screenshots of a log viewer instead of the whole logs. The big problem was training: Once I made it very clear to the entire team that unedited logs were critical to solving problems, management made sure that all newcomers knew how to attach unedited logs.
gyomu 11mo ago
Like other commenters point out, automatic OCR on Apple platforms is a godsend, and it's such a great use of our modern AI capabilities that it should be a standard feature in every document viewer on every platform. Another thing I wish was more common is metadata in screenshots, especially on phones. Eg if I take a screenshot of a picture in Instagram, I wish a URL of the picture was embedded (eg instagram.com/p/ABCD1234/). If I take a screenshot in the browser, include the URL that's being viewed (+ path to the DOM element in the viewport). If I take a screenshot in a maps app, include the bounding coordinates. If I take a screenshot in a PDF viewer, include a SHA1 hash of the document being viewed + offset in the document so that if I send the screenshot to someone else with the same document, it can seamlessly link to it. Etc etc. There are probably privacy concerns to solve here, but no idea is new in computer science and I'm pretty sure some grad student somewhere has already explored the topic in depth (it just never made it to mainstream computing platforms). It feels like screenshots have become the de facto common denominator in our mobile computing era, since platforms have abstracted files away from us. Lots of people who have only ever used phones as their main computing devices are confused when it comes to files, but everyone seems to understand screenshots. Also, necessary shout out to Screenshot Conf! https://screenshot.arquipelago.org https://screenshot.arquipelago.org
- pests 11mo ago
  > It feels like screenshots have become the de facto common denominator in our mobile computing era, Google/Apple have taken notice. Both have recently redone their full-screen post-screenshot UI to include AI insights / automatic product searches / direct chat with Gemini/LLM / etc. Its true everyone uses screenshots to save things they are interested in or want to look up / search more of / save for reason and this UI is the perfect place to insert themselves.
- paulmooreparks 11mo ago
  OP here. You raised a point that I should have mentioned in the article: screenshots of web pages that don't include the URL. I'm perfectly fine with screenshots of browser windows, since the context is almost always relevant. The system I work on right now puts a lot of useful context into the URL, but it's almost never included in the initial screenshot, so I have to ask for that. Of course, I generally ask for it as text so that I don't have to try to type the whole thing without making a mistake.
est 11mo ago
we need a way to make screenshot while make text copy-pastable. SVG maybe?
- phlummox 11mo ago
  gtk-vector-screenshot (<https://github.com/nomeata/gtk-vector-screenshot https://github.com/nomeata/gtk-vector-screenshot>) will do this, but for GTK apps only. It relies on a custom protocol layered on top of X Window, and I think traverses the tree of GTK widgets to create a vector representation. For a general screenshot program to work, I imagine it would need some sort of hook into every GUI framework used on your system.
elzbardico 11mo ago
Some people are too proud for their own good about their aesthetic choices in editor colors, typography and fonts.
- Tempest1981 11mo ago
  I do enjoy seeing what themes others are using.
jesse__ 11mo ago
This made me chuckle multiple times. Strong agree, Paul.
sneakinsnake 11mo ago
[flagged]
- rester324 11mo ago
  Why though? This is a common problem which only requires one thing: empathy/politeness from the screenshot sender. They ask your for your help and attention, but they can't be bothered to not to waste your time. I think it's fair to point out that this is bad workplace behavior
  - SoftTalker 11mo ago
    They don't care about your problems. They care about their problems.
  - crazygringo 11mo ago
    Except as I pointed out in another comment, there are many reasons why screenshots are superior and don't get messed up the way plain text does. I'm shocked to discover so many people hate screenshots, because I hate getting misaligned line-wrapped text that destroys readability. But now I can understand people have different preferences. It's not bad workplace behavior, and it's not a lack of empathy or politeness. It just seems to be different preferences is all.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- procaryote 11mo ago
  OP needs to stop helping people who send screenshots until they don't
albert_e 11mo ago
My preference -- Link or attachment to the full document or code in context (if needed) ... along with screenshot of a relevant portion. (Many times the former is optional because there is enough context already.) It is extra work to do both but I like to be through even when asking for help. Even if the other side doesn't need it -- because I myself might not remember all the nuances when I refer to that conversation later. Also screenshot preserves (before any fixes) the exact way things looked when I confronted a certain situation. The visual of the screenshot serves as a much stronger reminder of that situation and my thinking ...way better than mere copy pasted text.
dheera 11mo ago
> I have to either very carefully type some of the code into a search box or (these days) get my coding agent to find the relevant module for me. Your coding agent is not very smart if it can't deal with something as simple as OCR'ing an image and processing all the references in it, or letting you just select text from an image and searching or copying to the clipboard.
ZeWaka 11mo ago
This is why I send both a screenshot for easy conveyance of syntax highlighting and such, and a link to the code.
elzbardico 11mo ago
I think that Slack may be partially responsible for that. If I copy code from PyCharm or VS Code and paste it into fucking Microsoft Word, even spawn-of-Satan-MS-Word-for-Mac respects most of my formatting. Plenty of web text editors are also able to do that. But Slack, "The King of Useless Features Nobody Asked For", can't bother themselves to implement such a useful feature for their primary market.
- skydhash 11mo ago
  Code block is easy enough to create with ```. I've never have any issue with that.
  - elzbardico 11mo ago
    Not the same, it is not just paste and forget, if you want syntax highlighting need to add a snippet.
internetter 11mo ago
> or (these days) get my coding agent to find the relevant module for me ????? Just OCR a line and paste it into the IDE’s search field???? Or, if for some baffling reason you don’t have the ability to OCR, just pick out a function declaration in the screenshot and search for that? We’re so doomed as a profession.
shortformblog 11mo ago
This poor man is in a losing battle with modern computing.
dietr1ch 11mo ago
It seems there's great OCR available on Apple platforms, but to me it seems that we are giving ourselves a problem by properly attaching metadata where necessary. I honestly thought this was going to be solved in the 2010s with the rise of comic-like memes, but we just kept sharing images with ever increasing compression artifacts as things were shared around and used to create new memes.
clbrmbr 11mo ago
I’m one of the people sending these screenshots, and glad to receive them. It helps jog my memory to see a screenshot from the original context, with syntax highlighting or especially log output from our besoke logging system for firmware. It’s very hard to read without the colors!
- lutusp 11mo ago
  > It’s very hard to read without the colors! Many up-to-date messaging environments allow you to copy & paste text directly from your coding environment with indentation and syntax coloring intact. This is something the sender can establish before hitting "Send". Also, the sender has the option to attaching the source file, which if entered into a coding environment will recreate the syntax colors.
chasil 11mo ago
On Microsoft Teams, I will use alt-prtscn to share an image of a terminal. I am hyper-sensitive to emailing terminal screenshots in MS Outlook, as they cannot be searched.
VladVladikoff 11mo ago
Pretty much every new programmer I’ve ever hired has done this in their first few weeks. Every time I have to tell them why it’s so unhelpful to share screenshots of text instead of just pasting the text. Usually they learn. When they don’t I usually end up firing them, not for that reason but for others. The reason I personally hate it is I am often working from my phone. And it’s much easier to read text rendered properly than pinch zooming text in an image. What’s worse is slack will downgrade images for mobile and you can’t even pinch zoom in fully.
Footprint0521 11mo ago
Don’t even get me started. A colleague of mine made me screenshot a .env on a video call “for security” and I spent 30 min correcting OCR on it until it worked
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
asdfman123 11mo ago
Saving this for later: https://imgur.com/a/4sLznnY https://imgur.com/a/4sLznnY
- paulmooreparks 11mo ago
  OP here... this is priceless! True performance art. Well done.
SoftTalker 11mo ago
This is a lost cause, one of many that modern GUIs are responsible for. Just suck it up and deal with it because users are not going to stop sending you screenshots.
cnees 11mo ago
We use Slack and GitHub, so it's trivial to send formatted text or a file/line link and I basically never have to deal with screenshots of text. I guess this is just a nice reminder for me to be grateful.
lutusp 11mo ago
This is astonishing. A screenshot is not only the least useful representation of a subject under discussion, it also requires more bandwidth than text. I see two possible reasons for this -- the sender has no technical experience, or they're focused on making things more difficult for the recipient. But when trying to decide between these two, I'm reminded of the saying, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." This actually happened. A client wrote me, saying, "First, don't treat me like an idiot -- I have years of computer experience." "Okay, I promise," I replied. "What's the problem?" "Your program doesn't work." "Can you be more specific?" "I followed your instructions to the letter, but I see an error message." "Okay, what is the error message?" "It says, 'User [Enter your name here] is not found'."
jasonlotito 11mo ago
Please send screenshots. Also include links to the actual source where you got it, or if you can't sure, also share the text. But a screenshot is a perfect starting point as I may not always be in a position to follow a URL or deal with text that some chat program is having difficulty formating properly, and a screnshot can go a long way if I see what I need to see. Screenshots are fine. Just don't ONLY send screenshots.
mat_b 11mo ago
It's not always easy to copy text out of tmux or a VM. Screenshots are easy to create and it's not as hard as you make it sound to type a name into the search bar in the IDE...
wyldfire 11mo ago
"what did you do to make this appear, and what were you expecting to happen?"
thundergolfer 11mo ago
This is rule 7 of 10 in my post 'How to Ask for help in Slack'[1] 1. I have ‘rubber duck debugged’ my own question. 2. I checked that this question hasn’t been asked before. 3. I have noted in my message what I’ve tried. 4. I have avoided the ‘XY problem’ by clearly detailing the core problem, X. 5. I have provided specifics of my issue, not vague references or descriptions. 6. I have provided URL links to relevant content, and where possible the URL links are immutable. 7. I have not included screenshots of text in my message. 8. I have not used obscure acronyms or abbreviations. 9. I have formatted my message well, particularly paying attention to code formatting and headings. 10. I have not just said “hi” and waited for a reply. Like other posters, I don't think Apple OCR is sufficient to make up for screenshotting. The biggest problem is search. 1. https://thundergolfer.com/communication/slack/2021/02/24/how-to-ask-for-help-in-slack/ https://thundergolfer.com/communication/slack/2021/02/24/how...
- icehawk 11mo ago
  > Like other posters, I don't think Apple OCR is sufficient to make up for screenshotting. The biggest problem is search. Both Spotlight and Photos will find text in screenshots.
  - thundergolfer 11mo ago
    I don't think Slack does, nor Github, which is where I most find screenshotting being a problem.
    - icehawk 11mo ago
      I don't think either of those two are within the scope of Apple's OCR. Different horses, then.
  - superdocs1 11mo ago
    https://screenshotocr.app https://screenshotocr.app does this on Windows (I'm the founder).
al_be_back 11mo ago
Couldn't agree more, if posting on coding sites/forums, they usually have code highlighting. However, a screenshot acts like a print-out / pdf, and very handy for sharing in other platforms e.g social media, mobile devices. Like many others I like the use of ai for OCR in imagery. Won't be long before ai tool can copy the style + content from an image, or video.
jv22222 11mo ago
> I receive a lot of screenshots like this from well-meaning colleagues: That says all you need to know. The reason they send those screenshots is they believe the full context is more helpful. Code formatting, indentation etc. Personally I agree with that sentiment. There is a lot of context in the full visual of the original text in situ.
- lostlogin 11mo ago
  I’m have a growing collection of photos of handwritten notes that are texted to me to address. As irritating as that is, it’s better than the thing that happens in universities, where people email you PowerPoint files with the content being the text that should have been in the email. Maybe I should put the photos of notes into a PowerPoint?
kjellsbells 11mo ago
Thing is, screenshots are fast, and the same technique works across every app. If you work in a field where you might be filing trouble reports from web app A, native app B, website C,... its just easier to use the same technique across the board. Win+S or CMD Shift 4, and move on with your life. Not nice for the recipient maybe, but hella efficient for everyone else, and there are many more people in the latter camp than the former.
Ucalegon 11mo ago
Qwen3-VL-8B is quite amazing and has made translating screenshots of text so much easier via LM Studio. Does have some issues and edge cases, but being able to take a screenshot of text or some website doesn't have copyable text, thats a solvable issue for less than 16GBs of VRAM or unified memory.
LandenLove 11mo ago
I don't know if it has been mentioned already, but powertoys for windows has a text extraction tool/shortcut. It also supports multiple languages. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/text-extractor https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/text-ext...
artisin 11mo ago
I always thought a screenshot of code was just an iPeople flex. Like, "look at my code, framed in this glassy macOS window with a $29.99 drop shadow." Kinda like how Nix or Arch users can't resist mentioning they use Nix or Arch. (btw i use arch)
cammil 11mo ago
Screenshots preserve exactly what the user sees, and for this reason i believe they are the best format for evidence. They also preserve their look when your messaging software starts doing funny things with it. They are immune to accidental edits. They are reliable in the sense that if the original source ever changed, no one would argue that you didnt see what you saw with a screenshot. They wont degrade when the content of a url changes. We do use screenshots extensively, but alongside links and copied text when necessary
machomaster 11mo ago
Just use something like NormCap ( https://dynobo.github.io/normcap/ https://dynobo.github.io/normcap/ ), an "OCR-powered screenshot tool to capture text instead of images". Often, the screenshot of the code is exactly what I need, because it shows code syntax highlighted and I don't need to copy and paste it in the editor.
Oddmonkey 11mo ago
I had a guy send me a screenshot instead of code snippet because our company slack was rejecting the message due to sensitive information...
GolDDranks 11mo ago
What I usually do to share code, is send a link to GitHub or whatever VCS portal we are using. Of course, this doesn't work with local, new code, but that's why we also use liberally draft pull requests to share unfinished code.
pigeons 11mo ago
OMG me too. I know we aren't supposed to add low quality comments like that, but I have actually been waiting my whole life for someone else to say this!
softgrow 11mo ago
Worse still, I loathe screenshots of text on a website. Please make text is text so it works with a screen reader, can cut and paste etc. Less of it about now but used for multilingual websites for the secondary language, particularly if non-latin alphabet. Will no-one think of Unicode!
hinkley 11mo ago
Stack trace or GTFO
resonious 11mo ago
I find the argument a bit weak. The actual problem is not the screenshot but the lack of information. Even if you got the "C:\Users\Paul\whatever\whatever" text pasted in your inbox, what would you do with it? Also, are you manipulating these text? If I'm asked to find a bug in some code, looking at it is all I can really do. (Okay maybe you want to compile it or run it, that's fair)
Grom_PE 11mo ago
On my Linux system, I hooked up xfce4-screenshooter's "custom action" to a shell script (ocr.sh %f) with tesseract like so: #!/bin/sh set -o pipefail lang=${2:-eng} if tesseract "$1" - -l $lang | xclip -selection clipboard ; then notify-send "Text copied" else notify-send "Could not copy text" fi It works great most of the time along with the xfce4-screenshooter's ability to select a rectangle. When the text is especially difficult for tesseract, I can use Gemma3-4B via llama.cpp's llama-mtmd-cli, but that takes a minute.
- frumiousirc 11mo ago
  https://0x0.st/K9hq.png https://0x0.st/K9hq.png
benrutter 11mo ago
I just want to offer a counter ti the comments that, I really don't mind! If it's some new greenfield project, I definitely want a script rather than a screenshot, but if you're saying "i think this line is the issue", "here's my error stack" or "what if we added something here?" then I'll happily recieve screenshots if it's easier for you! (just please, please, semd me something and not just "there's am issue with x because it is throwing me an error")
alvinveroy 11mo ago
[dead]
zem 11mo ago
what we need is a "rich text box" file format, classed as an image for embedding purposes and supported everywhere images are, but formattable and selectable text internally. would solve the issue of people using images of text on various social media sites too.
poopbutt12 11mo ago
[flagged]
raffael_de 11mo ago
the whole post is entirely missing the point. screenshots do have its merit for reasons already mentioned here. beyond that the optimal method would be a link to the line or section into the respective source control system.
procaryote 11mo ago
If you don't want screenshots of text, say: "hey, could you send me that as text instead?"
ivanjermakov 11mo ago
I see so many people struggle with providing context of what they're asking. It's easy to forget that other person is not sitting in your head.
ggirelli 11mo ago
This has happened to me so many times...
amid11 11mo ago
Tell that to my father! he seems obsessed with taking screenshots.
ewgoforth 11mo ago
For those of you running Windows, OneNote will allow you to text from images pretty easily.
lunias 11mo ago
"Hey, got a second for a question about this code?" Sends screenshot with no context. Don't ask to ask, just ask; and post a link and a line number.
dangus 11mo ago
This blog post could have been an email? Has OP tried communicating? "Thanks for sending me this screenshot. Can you also send over the link to this code block in our source control?"
1vuio0pswjnm7 11mo ago
The author's resume lists HTTP 1.0 and 1.1 but not HTTP/2 or HTTP/3
satisfice 11mo ago
No one has ever sent me a screenshot of code. Am I missing out on this life experience?
alexsmirnov 11mo ago
I saw it more and more recent times, but worse is coming: With my teenage daughter ( and her friends ), I see that they even do not bother with screenshots, and take pictures by phone...
Departed7405 11mo ago
The link doesn't work. I get Cloudlfare error 1033 (Please don't mention Web Archive, they now block my VPN)
tim333 11mo ago
I have to say, although people hate on it, google lens in chrome is very handy. They move the icon around but assuming you can find you just highlight the image and then it ocrs it, tells you where it came from, lists similar images, and when I tried it on the image in the article the AI analysed it a bit: >The image shows a code snippet, likely written in C#, that retrieves and processes data from a WordPress API. The code checks for an empty slug, makes an HTTP GET request to a specific URL, and then attempts to parse the JSON response. It includes error handling for both HTTP failures and invalid JSON. >The code uses C# and is designed to interact with the WordPress REST API...

340 points by paulmooreparks 11mo ago

just a dumb sales guy - but I assumed when people were asking about code they would always copy paste it. ... Is this really common?

lutusp 11mo ago
> ... Is this really common? Only among people who don't code. A non-coder doesn't know the difference between a block of code, and a picture of a block of code. A woman visits the studio of a famous artist. She says, "That woman is all distorted!" The artist replies, "Madam, that is not a woman, that is a picture of a woman."
- paulmooreparks 11mo ago
  Sadly, I wrote this article about people who are coders, whom I would expect to know that I would prefer the text rather than a screenshot.
  - lutusp 11mo ago
    > ...I wrote this article about people who are coders ... Maybe vibe coders. :) People who have never been in the opposite predicament.

tcdent 11mo ago

This is essentially a solved problem. Whenever someone sends me a screenshot that contains any text information (tables, etc), I pass it to an LLM and it correctly interprets the content of it. On modern versions of macOS you can just select text in images relatively painlessly, too. Linux desktop users will get there one day.

walt_grata 11mo ago
Or just ask people not to send you data in useless formats. That way you don't have to burn an acre of trees to power it and you help someone be less difficult.
- tcdent 11mo ago
  I'm sure they will send you well written, accurate documentation if you ask, too...
  - matt_kantor 11mo ago
    I'm absolutely sure they won't if you don't.
recursive 11mo ago
Another way it's solved is that clipboards work on text too.
forgotpwd16 11mo ago
As described in the article, it isn't just text being image but that, usually, the image is only a subset of the entire text. Yes, OCR can help find the file containing a code segment in your local codebase but issues such as, mentioned in the article, sending a random error line rather the entire log remain.
anonzzzies 11mo ago
Claude on Linux does it fine, so does cursor, codex, claude code, ollama etc. Not that I would use any of these for this; if someone sends me screenshot, it is relevant for me so I know where to find what is in it quite readily if needed at all.

ddxv 11mo ago

Agreed! The one that I really don't like is that social platforms promote / prefer screenshots of text. Search engines promote sites that link to themselves. All the good parts of URLs are missing. How often I see something interesting, just to realize it's a screenshot and I have to go dig around myself figuring out where it came from.

nippoo 11mo ago

Preview on Mac does automatic OCR. I'm sure other tools exist that are similarly friction-free on other platforms, but it took me under 5 seconds (drag the image from the webpage into my downloads folder, click on it, and then select the relevant snippet and CMD+C to copy it). I imagine I'd have similar frustrations if I couldn't copy-paste the text easily though!

pavon 11mo ago

I mostly see this in Teams, and I can't really blame the sender because Teams' support for code blocks is so horrible.

excalibur 11mo ago
When I see a text screenshot in Teams, it's typically a snippet of a conversation in a different Teams chat.
paulmooreparks 11mo ago
OP here. My current team uses MS Teams. I've been teaching my colleagues how to create code blocks in Teams (basically, teaching them Markdown). It's there, but it's not readily discoverable.
- focom 11mo ago
  Teams has really poor code block compared to slack or any other tool. You can feel the arrogance of the Microsoft PM each time you paste code or paste text that randomly render as html. Somehow, slack still has a better text input compared to teams.

furyofantares 11mo ago

> I have to either very carefully type some of the code into a search box or (these days) get my coding agent to find the relevant module for me. What about just asking them what file that is?

bnj 11mo ago

I agree that screenshots of text that are cut off from essential context are enough to make me pull my hair out, it creates so much extra work— but the modern feature of automatic text recognition in screenshots and images that allows for copy and paste has been incredible. Along with indexing that allows it to be searched, regular screenshots have become one of the most robust and future proof ways for me to preserve context from my workspace. When I look back into archived screenshots it helps me to recapture all kinds of things that I wouldn’t have thought to explicitly record.

sen 11mo ago

The ability to highlight/copy/etc text on Macs/iOS these days is such a killer feature. I use it almost every day, both for copying/translating text in screenshots or taking photos of text to then copy it into my notes later (eg school notice boards or event posters etc).

WorldPeas 11mo ago
this. makes me wish more image viewers would ocr->png special field->have location-attached selectable text like a pdf
ivewonyoung 11mo ago
OneNote had this for a long time.
- sumnole 11mo ago
  Aside from copying text from images, OneNote can also make text in images searchable.
  - spockz 11mo ago
    Spotlight, notes, and Photos also look at photos and return them in search result. Even going further where you can give a description and find it as well.
sqrt_1 11mo ago
Windows built-in snipping tool (shortcut Win + Shift + S) also has a text actions button to extract text.
- vismit2000 11mo ago
  Or Powertoys does that even better: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/text-extractor https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/text-ext...
- 11mo ago

wenderen 11mo ago

This article is a specific case of a more general piece of advice: ask questions well (provide context like clickable links, trim down your query to the minimal reproducible case, pose high-precision questions, etc.).

crazygringo 11mo ago

I disagree. I use screenshots all the time, because it: - Preserves the full 80 character width without line-wrapping, which destroys readability - Guarantees monospace, so tabular data doesn't get all misaligned - Preserves a good coding font, so it doesn't come out as some hairline-width Courier on the other end - Preserves syntax highlighting, very helpful Obviously if somebody needs a whole file or whole log, then send the whole thing as an attachment. But very often I'll still include a screenshot of the relevant part. With line numbers, it's not difficult to jump to the right part of the attached file. Screenshots are incredibly useful for keeping code and terminal output looking like code and terminal output, and not getting completely mangled in an e-mail or chat message being read on a mobile device or in a narrow column.

bluedino 11mo ago
> Preserves a good coding font, so it doesn't come out as some hairline-width Courier on the other end Let me introduce you to Putty users who never change the default font...
johannes1234321 11mo ago
Except it doesn't use my preferred font, not my don't size, not my colors and I can't copy parts of it as easily and then the stupid chat app scales the image for some reason ot another.
riazrizvi 11mo ago
Yeah. OP has an egocentric bias - it’s not the norm in the world of work sharing that you can faithfully reproduce the live/contextual environment of the sender given the raw string. (OP’s blog purports to be pertinent to freelance software development).
- jahsome 11mo ago
  What about accessibility?
  - SpicyLemonZest 11mo ago

bluedino 11mo ago

I secretly enjoyed the lectures out people would get on StackOverflow when they did this.

conductr 11mo ago

My response is usually “need context”. No shame in making them fill in the gaps they created in the first place Nothing against screenshots unless they are lacking context

kqcso 11mo ago
Agreed. Sometimes context comes from more screen, not less. I receive a lot of cropped screenshots that show the “problem” but hide the surrounding context, and they often exclude things that would make a solution immediately clear from a shot of the full application window.
- conductr 11mo ago
  Definitely true although my motive is more based on a principle of “don’t let people send me on a fishing trip”. I’m glad to help but people need to learn the proper way of asking without completely inconveniencing the other person
dangus 11mo ago
That's an obtuse and semi-rude response in itself. It's not hard to actually communicate. "Thanks for sending this over to me, can you please send me a link to the code segment from source control?" It's not hard to be polite and firm.
- conductr 11mo ago
  If I don’t know you, sure. The source of this usually comes from a teammate via a chat app (slack, teams) or email. In that context, I’m telling them concisely “I don’t have enough information to help you”. Tell me more. Figure out how to ask for help in a better way. Conciseness shouldn’t be assumed as rude when you have a working relationship with the other person and it’s obtuse precisely because they need to fill in the gaps, not me. Me and my teammates regularly get by on one word responses. Nobody interprets it as rude, we’re all busy and don’t get our feathers in a bunch over this kind of stuff. If someone did, they’d need coaching not the other way around.

drewg123 11mo ago

I personally hate screenshots of kernel panics. Or anything else where you might be dealing with 64-bit hex addresses like "0xffffffff81b7ed80" Typing that from a picture is infinitely more error prone than just cut/paste.

Hackbraten 11mo ago
What if the kernel panic happens at boot time so you never get to access its dump?
- drewg123 11mo ago
  I prefer serial consoles :)

deleted 11mo ago

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nicodjimenez 11mo ago

Note that Mathpix Snip can quickly convert such screen shots to markdown code via keyboard shortcut. Disclaimer: I’m the founder.

romaniitedomum 11mo ago

Screenshots of text! Luxury! In my day, the screenshots were embedded in a Word document too. But I can't be the only one appalled at the suggestion to use an LLM to parse the text. The sheer, prodigious waste of computing power, just to round-trip text to an image and back to text, when what's really missing is a computer user interface that makes it as simple to send text or other snippets as it is to send screenshots.

FabHK 11mo ago
Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2116/ https://xkcd.com/2116/
RedShift1 11mo ago
It can get worse. People use their phones to send a literal photo of their screen. This happens almost daily in one of the programming discords I'm member of and it drives me crazy, these are supposed to be (future) programmers and they don't even know how to make a proper screenshot??
- tonyedgecombe 11mo ago
  When I'd get that from a customer I knew I was in for a whole lot of pain.
PeterStuer 11mo ago
I knew an enterprise where Word documents were used as "folders" for Word documents. The "top" document would have a collection of files pasted in to them (the actual file objects, not just the file content).

gwbas1c 11mo ago

When I get these, there's usually enough context that I can find the actual text. That being said, I've had to twist some arms in a previous job for new employees attaching screenshots of a log viewer instead of the whole logs. The big problem was training: Once I made it very clear to the entire team that unedited logs were critical to solving problems, management made sure that all newcomers knew how to attach unedited logs.

gyomu 11mo ago

Like other commenters point out, automatic OCR on Apple platforms is a godsend, and it's such a great use of our modern AI capabilities that it should be a standard feature in every document viewer on every platform. Another thing I wish was more common is metadata in screenshots, especially on phones. Eg if I take a screenshot of a picture in Instagram, I wish a URL of the picture was embedded (eg instagram.com/p/ABCD1234/). If I take a screenshot in the browser, include the URL that's being viewed (+ path to the DOM element in the viewport). If I take a screenshot in a maps app, include the bounding coordinates. If I take a screenshot in a PDF viewer, include a SHA1 hash of the document being viewed + offset in the document so that if I send the screenshot to someone else with the same document, it can seamlessly link to it. Etc etc. There are probably privacy concerns to solve here, but no idea is new in computer science and I'm pretty sure some grad student somewhere has already explored the topic in depth (it just never made it to mainstream computing platforms). It feels like screenshots have become the de facto common denominator in our mobile computing era, since platforms have abstracted files away from us. Lots of people who have only ever used phones as their main computing devices are confused when it comes to files, but everyone seems to understand screenshots. Also, necessary shout out to Screenshot Conf! https://screenshot.arquipelago.org https://screenshot.arquipelago.org

pests 11mo ago
> It feels like screenshots have become the de facto common denominator in our mobile computing era, Google/Apple have taken notice. Both have recently redone their full-screen post-screenshot UI to include AI insights / automatic product searches / direct chat with Gemini/LLM / etc. Its true everyone uses screenshots to save things they are interested in or want to look up / search more of / save for reason and this UI is the perfect place to insert themselves.
paulmooreparks 11mo ago
OP here. You raised a point that I should have mentioned in the article: screenshots of web pages that don't include the URL. I'm perfectly fine with screenshots of browser windows, since the context is almost always relevant. The system I work on right now puts a lot of useful context into the URL, but it's almost never included in the initial screenshot, so I have to ask for that. Of course, I generally ask for it as text so that I don't have to try to type the whole thing without making a mistake.

est 11mo ago

we need a way to make screenshot while make text copy-pastable. SVG maybe?

phlummox 11mo ago
gtk-vector-screenshot (<https://github.com/nomeata/gtk-vector-screenshot https://github.com/nomeata/gtk-vector-screenshot>) will do this, but for GTK apps only. It relies on a custom protocol layered on top of X Window, and I think traverses the tree of GTK widgets to create a vector representation. For a general screenshot program to work, I imagine it would need some sort of hook into every GUI framework used on your system.

elzbardico 11mo ago

Some people are too proud for their own good about their aesthetic choices in editor colors, typography and fonts.

Tempest1981 11mo ago
I do enjoy seeing what themes others are using.

jesse__ 11mo ago

This made me chuckle multiple times. Strong agree, Paul.

sneakinsnake 11mo ago

[flagged]

rester324 11mo ago
Why though? This is a common problem which only requires one thing: empathy/politeness from the screenshot sender. They ask your for your help and attention, but they can't be bothered to not to waste your time. I think it's fair to point out that this is bad workplace behavior
- SoftTalker 11mo ago
  They don't care about your problems. They care about their problems.
- crazygringo 11mo ago
  Except as I pointed out in another comment, there are many reasons why screenshots are superior and don't get messed up the way plain text does. I'm shocked to discover so many people hate screenshots, because I hate getting misaligned line-wrapped text that destroys readability. But now I can understand people have different preferences. It's not bad workplace behavior, and it's not a lack of empathy or politeness. It just seems to be different preferences is all.
deleted 11mo ago
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procaryote 11mo ago
OP needs to stop helping people who send screenshots until they don't

albert_e 11mo ago

My preference -- Link or attachment to the full document or code in context (if needed) ... along with screenshot of a relevant portion. (Many times the former is optional because there is enough context already.) It is extra work to do both but I like to be through even when asking for help. Even if the other side doesn't need it -- because I myself might not remember all the nuances when I refer to that conversation later. Also screenshot preserves (before any fixes) the exact way things looked when I confronted a certain situation. The visual of the screenshot serves as a much stronger reminder of that situation and my thinking ...way better than mere copy pasted text.

dheera 11mo ago

> I have to either very carefully type some of the code into a search box or (these days) get my coding agent to find the relevant module for me. Your coding agent is not very smart if it can't deal with something as simple as OCR'ing an image and processing all the references in it, or letting you just select text from an image and searching or copying to the clipboard.

ZeWaka 11mo ago

This is why I send both a screenshot for easy conveyance of syntax highlighting and such, and a link to the code.

elzbardico 11mo ago

I think that Slack may be partially responsible for that. If I copy code from PyCharm or VS Code and paste it into fucking Microsoft Word, even spawn-of-Satan-MS-Word-for-Mac respects most of my formatting. Plenty of web text editors are also able to do that. But Slack, "The King of Useless Features Nobody Asked For", can't bother themselves to implement such a useful feature for their primary market.

skydhash 11mo ago
Code block is easy enough to create with ```. I've never have any issue with that.
- elzbardico 11mo ago
  Not the same, it is not just paste and forget, if you want syntax highlighting need to add a snippet.

internetter 11mo ago

> or (these days) get my coding agent to find the relevant module for me ????? Just OCR a line and paste it into the IDE’s search field???? Or, if for some baffling reason you don’t have the ability to OCR, just pick out a function declaration in the screenshot and search for that? We’re so doomed as a profession.

shortformblog 11mo ago

This poor man is in a losing battle with modern computing.

dietr1ch 11mo ago

It seems there's great OCR available on Apple platforms, but to me it seems that we are giving ourselves a problem by properly attaching metadata where necessary. I honestly thought this was going to be solved in the 2010s with the rise of comic-like memes, but we just kept sharing images with ever increasing compression artifacts as things were shared around and used to create new memes.

clbrmbr 11mo ago

I’m one of the people sending these screenshots, and glad to receive them. It helps jog my memory to see a screenshot from the original context, with syntax highlighting or especially log output from our besoke logging system for firmware. It’s very hard to read without the colors!

lutusp 11mo ago
> It’s very hard to read without the colors! Many up-to-date messaging environments allow you to copy & paste text directly from your coding environment with indentation and syntax coloring intact. This is something the sender can establish before hitting "Send". Also, the sender has the option to attaching the source file, which if entered into a coding environment will recreate the syntax colors.

chasil 11mo ago

On Microsoft Teams, I will use alt-prtscn to share an image of a terminal. I am hyper-sensitive to emailing terminal screenshots in MS Outlook, as they cannot be searched.

VladVladikoff 11mo ago

Pretty much every new programmer I’ve ever hired has done this in their first few weeks. Every time I have to tell them why it’s so unhelpful to share screenshots of text instead of just pasting the text. Usually they learn. When they don’t I usually end up firing them, not for that reason but for others. The reason I personally hate it is I am often working from my phone. And it’s much easier to read text rendered properly than pinch zooming text in an image. What’s worse is slack will downgrade images for mobile and you can’t even pinch zoom in fully.

Footprint0521 11mo ago

Don’t even get me started. A colleague of mine made me screenshot a .env on a video call “for security” and I spent 30 min correcting OCR on it until it worked

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

asdfman123 11mo ago

Saving this for later: https://imgur.com/a/4sLznnY https://imgur.com/a/4sLznnY

paulmooreparks 11mo ago
OP here... this is priceless! True performance art. Well done.

SoftTalker 11mo ago

This is a lost cause, one of many that modern GUIs are responsible for. Just suck it up and deal with it because users are not going to stop sending you screenshots.

cnees 11mo ago

We use Slack and GitHub, so it's trivial to send formatted text or a file/line link and I basically never have to deal with screenshots of text. I guess this is just a nice reminder for me to be grateful.

lutusp 11mo ago

This is astonishing. A screenshot is not only the least useful representation of a subject under discussion, it also requires more bandwidth than text. I see two possible reasons for this -- the sender has no technical experience, or they're focused on making things more difficult for the recipient. But when trying to decide between these two, I'm reminded of the saying, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." This actually happened. A client wrote me, saying, "First, don't treat me like an idiot -- I have years of computer experience." "Okay, I promise," I replied. "What's the problem?" "Your program doesn't work." "Can you be more specific?" "I followed your instructions to the letter, but I see an error message." "Okay, what is the error message?" "It says, 'User [Enter your name here] is not found'."

jasonlotito 11mo ago

Please send screenshots. Also include links to the actual source where you got it, or if you can't sure, also share the text. But a screenshot is a perfect starting point as I may not always be in a position to follow a URL or deal with text that some chat program is having difficulty formating properly, and a screnshot can go a long way if I see what I need to see. Screenshots are fine. Just don't ONLY send screenshots.

mat_b 11mo ago

It's not always easy to copy text out of tmux or a VM. Screenshots are easy to create and it's not as hard as you make it sound to type a name into the search bar in the IDE...

wyldfire 11mo ago

"what did you do to make this appear, and what were you expecting to happen?"

thundergolfer 11mo ago

This is rule 7 of 10 in my post 'How to Ask for help in Slack'[1] 1. I have ‘rubber duck debugged’ my own question. 2. I checked that this question hasn’t been asked before. 3. I have noted in my message what I’ve tried. 4. I have avoided the ‘XY problem’ by clearly detailing the core problem, X. 5. I have provided specifics of my issue, not vague references or descriptions. 6. I have provided URL links to relevant content, and where possible the URL links are immutable. 7. I have not included screenshots of text in my message. 8. I have not used obscure acronyms or abbreviations. 9. I have formatted my message well, particularly paying attention to code formatting and headings. 10. I have not just said “hi” and waited for a reply. Like other posters, I don't think Apple OCR is sufficient to make up for screenshotting. The biggest problem is search. 1. https://thundergolfer.com/communication/slack/2021/02/24/how-to-ask-for-help-in-slack/ https://thundergolfer.com/communication/slack/2021/02/24/how...

icehawk 11mo ago
> Like other posters, I don't think Apple OCR is sufficient to make up for screenshotting. The biggest problem is search. Both Spotlight and Photos will find text in screenshots.
- thundergolfer 11mo ago
  I don't think Slack does, nor Github, which is where I most find screenshotting being a problem.
  - icehawk 11mo ago
    I don't think either of those two are within the scope of Apple's OCR. Different horses, then.
- superdocs1 11mo ago
  https://screenshotocr.app https://screenshotocr.app does this on Windows (I'm the founder).

al_be_back 11mo ago

Couldn't agree more, if posting on coding sites/forums, they usually have code highlighting. However, a screenshot acts like a print-out / pdf, and very handy for sharing in other platforms e.g social media, mobile devices. Like many others I like the use of ai for OCR in imagery. Won't be long before ai tool can copy the style + content from an image, or video.

jv22222 11mo ago

> I receive a lot of screenshots like this from well-meaning colleagues: That says all you need to know. The reason they send those screenshots is they believe the full context is more helpful. Code formatting, indentation etc. Personally I agree with that sentiment. There is a lot of context in the full visual of the original text in situ.

lostlogin 11mo ago
I’m have a growing collection of photos of handwritten notes that are texted to me to address. As irritating as that is, it’s better than the thing that happens in universities, where people email you PowerPoint files with the content being the text that should have been in the email. Maybe I should put the photos of notes into a PowerPoint?

kjellsbells 11mo ago

Thing is, screenshots are fast, and the same technique works across every app. If you work in a field where you might be filing trouble reports from web app A, native app B, website C,... its just easier to use the same technique across the board. Win+S or CMD Shift 4, and move on with your life. Not nice for the recipient maybe, but hella efficient for everyone else, and there are many more people in the latter camp than the former.

Ucalegon 11mo ago

Qwen3-VL-8B is quite amazing and has made translating screenshots of text so much easier via LM Studio. Does have some issues and edge cases, but being able to take a screenshot of text or some website doesn't have copyable text, thats a solvable issue for less than 16GBs of VRAM or unified memory.

LandenLove 11mo ago

I don't know if it has been mentioned already, but powertoys for windows has a text extraction tool/shortcut. It also supports multiple languages. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/text-extractor https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/text-ext...

artisin 11mo ago

I always thought a screenshot of code was just an iPeople flex. Like, "look at my code, framed in this glassy macOS window with a $29.99 drop shadow." Kinda like how Nix or Arch users can't resist mentioning they use Nix or Arch. (btw i use arch)

cammil 11mo ago

Screenshots preserve exactly what the user sees, and for this reason i believe they are the best format for evidence. They also preserve their look when your messaging software starts doing funny things with it. They are immune to accidental edits. They are reliable in the sense that if the original source ever changed, no one would argue that you didnt see what you saw with a screenshot. They wont degrade when the content of a url changes. We do use screenshots extensively, but alongside links and copied text when necessary

machomaster 11mo ago

Just use something like NormCap ( https://dynobo.github.io/normcap/ https://dynobo.github.io/normcap/ ), an "OCR-powered screenshot tool to capture text instead of images". Often, the screenshot of the code is exactly what I need, because it shows code syntax highlighted and I don't need to copy and paste it in the editor.

Oddmonkey 11mo ago

I had a guy send me a screenshot instead of code snippet because our company slack was rejecting the message due to sensitive information...

GolDDranks 11mo ago

What I usually do to share code, is send a link to GitHub or whatever VCS portal we are using. Of course, this doesn't work with local, new code, but that's why we also use liberally draft pull requests to share unfinished code.

pigeons 11mo ago

OMG me too. I know we aren't supposed to add low quality comments like that, but I have actually been waiting my whole life for someone else to say this!

softgrow 11mo ago

Worse still, I loathe screenshots of text on a website. Please make text is text so it works with a screen reader, can cut and paste etc. Less of it about now but used for multilingual websites for the secondary language, particularly if non-latin alphabet. Will no-one think of Unicode!

hinkley 11mo ago

Stack trace or GTFO

resonious 11mo ago

I find the argument a bit weak. The actual problem is not the screenshot but the lack of information. Even if you got the "C:\Users\Paul\whatever\whatever" text pasted in your inbox, what would you do with it? Also, are you manipulating these text? If I'm asked to find a bug in some code, looking at it is all I can really do. (Okay maybe you want to compile it or run it, that's fair)

Grom_PE 11mo ago

On my Linux system, I hooked up xfce4-screenshooter's "custom action" to a shell script (ocr.sh %f) with tesseract like so: #!/bin/sh set -o pipefail lang=${2:-eng} if tesseract "$1" - -l $lang | xclip -selection clipboard ; then notify-send "Text copied" else notify-send "Could not copy text" fi It works great most of the time along with the xfce4-screenshooter's ability to select a rectangle. When the text is especially difficult for tesseract, I can use Gemma3-4B via llama.cpp's llama-mtmd-cli, but that takes a minute.

frumiousirc 11mo ago
https://0x0.st/K9hq.png https://0x0.st/K9hq.png

benrutter 11mo ago

I just want to offer a counter ti the comments that, I really don't mind! If it's some new greenfield project, I definitely want a script rather than a screenshot, but if you're saying "i think this line is the issue", "here's my error stack" or "what if we added something here?" then I'll happily recieve screenshots if it's easier for you! (just please, please, semd me something and not just "there's am issue with x because it is throwing me an error")

alvinveroy 11mo ago

[dead]

zem 11mo ago

what we need is a "rich text box" file format, classed as an image for embedding purposes and supported everywhere images are, but formattable and selectable text internally. would solve the issue of people using images of text on various social media sites too.

poopbutt12 11mo ago

[flagged]

raffael_de 11mo ago

the whole post is entirely missing the point. screenshots do have its merit for reasons already mentioned here. beyond that the optimal method would be a link to the line or section into the respective source control system.

procaryote 11mo ago

If you don't want screenshots of text, say: "hey, could you send me that as text instead?"

ivanjermakov 11mo ago

I see so many people struggle with providing context of what they're asking. It's easy to forget that other person is not sitting in your head.

ggirelli 11mo ago

This has happened to me so many times...

amid11 11mo ago

Tell that to my father! he seems obsessed with taking screenshots.

ewgoforth 11mo ago

For those of you running Windows, OneNote will allow you to text from images pretty easily.

lunias 11mo ago

"Hey, got a second for a question about this code?" Sends screenshot with no context. Don't ask to ask, just ask; and post a link and a line number.

dangus 11mo ago

This blog post could have been an email? Has OP tried communicating? "Thanks for sending me this screenshot. Can you also send over the link to this code block in our source control?"

1vuio0pswjnm7 11mo ago

The author's resume lists HTTP 1.0 and 1.1 but not HTTP/2 or HTTP/3

satisfice 11mo ago

No one has ever sent me a screenshot of code. Am I missing out on this life experience?

alexsmirnov 11mo ago

I saw it more and more recent times, but worse is coming: With my teenage daughter ( and her friends ), I see that they even do not bother with screenshots, and take pictures by phone...

Departed7405 11mo ago

The link doesn't work. I get Cloudlfare error 1033 (Please don't mention Web Archive, they now block my VPN)

tim333 11mo ago

I have to say, although people hate on it, google lens in chrome is very handy. They move the icon around but assuming you can find you just highlight the image and then it ocrs it, tells you where it came from, lists similar images, and when I tried it on the image in the article the AI analysed it a bit: >The image shows a code snippet, likely written in C#, that retrieves and processes data from a WordPress API. The code checks for an empty slug, makes an HTTP GET request to a specific URL, and then attempts to parse the JSON response. It includes error handling for both HTTP failures and invalid JSON. >The code uses C# and is designed to interact with the WordPress REST API...