Re: gnome-utils branched for GNOME 2.16

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

Hi Jeff;

On Mon, 2006-09-04 at 21:01 +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Emmanuele Bassi">
> 
> >   * Switch Screenshot to a full GtkFileChooser dialog and provide
> >     the UI it as a shared library for other applications to use;
> 
> Have you seen the Windows Vista screenshot tool? The basic UI is pants, but
> it offers some cool features that we could swipe:
> 
>  * Full screen
>  * Window selection (click to choose)

This could be relatively easy to implement...

>  * Rectangular selection

... while this has its own bug number:

  http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155061

>  * Lassoo selection (relatively crackful)

Mmh, I this this is really too much crack to be worth it; selecting the
screenshot area using a rubberband-like selection should be enough.

> At the moment, it is fairly difficult to do a window selection unless you
> know the secret password (key combo or CLI parameters). An optional two step
> process (made optional by defaulting to full screen as it works now) would
> help with that.

The problem is that I really don't know how to make the Screenshot
utility work with a two-step flow without having people screaming at my
doorstep because I disrupted their one-step flow. :-)  And I quite agree
with them: taking a shot of the screen should require the least possible
iterations, especially if you want to take loads of shots.

> We could even integrate video screencast creating tools into the default
> screenshot tool (such as Byzanz, Istanbul, or a combination of the two so we
> can do GIF and GStreamer video codecs).

There was a patch integrating GStreamer ximagesrc sink:

  http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=304933

it was for GStreamer 0.8, so it should be ported to 0.10 first; also,
the ximagesrc sink can be used to drop the whole shebang of X functions
currently used to take a screenshot.

> (I mention it because it sounds like going to a "full GtkFileChooser dialog"
> means strengthening the one step process workflow.)

Actually, it means fixing the UI which now behaves *almost* like a
FileChooser but not quite - and confuses users.  I had planned the UI
change during 2.15, but between work, moving between countries and the
wedding I could not get around and finish it.

Ciao,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
Emmanuele Bassi,  E: ebassi gmail com
W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.net
B: http://log.emmanuelebassi.net