automated screenshots (was Re: more doc work, Re: completed gataxx doc)

[Joachim Noreiko <jnoreiko yahoo com>]

--- karderio <karderio gmail com> wrote:

> Hi :o)
> 
> On Sun, 2006-07-30 at 12:56 -0700, Ryan Paul wrote:
> > I can do the screenshots, including the
> cropping/fading. Are there
> > specific GTK/Metacity themes that I should use?
> > 
> > If there is sufficient interest, I am also willing
> to make a utility to
> > help automate the screenshot/crop/fade process.
> Last year I was writing
> > articles with lots of screenshots, and I started
> to get really
> > frustrated with the limitations of the GNOME
> screenshot utility. I
> > eventually made my own with Ruby and Glade. It
> does a lot of things that
> > the GNOME screenshot utility doesn't do. For
> instance, it can capture a
> > specific window or a specified screen region. It
> probably wouldn't be
> > that difficult to extend my utility so that it can
> optionally perform
> > the border fade operation. If enough doc writers
> are interested in using
> > something like that, I am willing to rewrite it in
> Python so that people
> > don't have to wrestle with the Ruby GNOME
> dependencies.
> 
> Interested I am. This is on my todo list also. I
> looked into this a
> while back. The plan was to use DogTail to automate
> the process of
> taking the shots in each language[1], by running a
> script in the help
> directory. The problem was that dogtail didn't run
> properly on my system
> yet. 

How much can DogTail automate?

Can everything about how a screenshot should be made
be codified into a script? -- eg window size, document
contents, menus, dialog boxes, pop-up elements etc?

If so, then I can imagine the following scenario:

The DocBook file contains a tag for the screenshot.
This tag contains somewhere within it meta-information
destined for DogTail.
The documentation writer copies this to the terminal,
dogtail opens a few windows, does its stuff, and
shazamm!!! the screenshot has been updated based on
the software on the writer's system. (Because the
meta-information also says where to save the file, of
course!)
An eventual GUI documentation editor would just have a
nice big button: "Update Screenshot".

It's nice to dream, huh? :)


		
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