It's often necessary to use screen captures as illustrations in books. This appendix contains some instructions on how to snap a portion of your screen. There are a variety of tools available to aid you in producing screen captures; use whichever seems most appropriate to your needs. Feel free to use tools not mentioned in this appendix, as long as they output files in standard RGB format.
To use the bsnap, ssnap, and winsnap tools, you must append /usr/share/Insight/bin to your path or PATH environment variable. This variable is initialized in your ~/.cshrc file if you use the C shell or a shell derived from the C shell, and in your ~/.profile file if you use the Bourne shell or a shell derived from it. Be sure to use the rehash command after editing your .cshrc file.
Name your screen capture figure files descriptively, so that someone else can tell which figures go where. The filenames should end in the .rgb suffix. For example, if your book is called MyBook, and you have three figures in chapter one, you might name the figures mybook_fig1.1.rgb, mybook_fig1.2.rgb, and mybook_fig1.3.rgb. Or you might use descriptive names such as 01.1.sample.rgb, 01.2.menubar.rgb, and 01.3.dialog.rgb.
The screen capture procedure is slightly different depending on what you want to capture: full windows, portions of windows, or pull-down menus. Note that for any of these approaches, if you want to show your screen capture against a white background you must first place the background, then place the window you're capturing on top of that background. One way of doing this is to open a shell window with a white background:
% xwsh -bg white |
If you want to capture an entire window, with or without its borders, use bsnap. (You can use winsnap if you prefer; it does essentially the same thing, though it provides fewer options and can't include window borders.) See “Tools and Where to Get Them” for more information about these capture utilities.
In a shell window, change to the directory where you are going to store the screen captures (this is usually the orig subdirectory of your working directory for a given book).
Decide what you're going to name the screen capture. (See “Screen Capture File Names” earlier in this chapter for some guidelines.)
Bring the window you want to capture to the front, leaving part of your shell window visible.
If you want to include the window's border (including its title bar), launch bsnap like this from the shell window:
% bsnap filename |
If you don't want to include the window's border, launch bsnap like this:
% bsnap -n filename |
Click anywhere in the window you wish to capture.
Wait a few seconds for the capture to complete.
Verify that the capture worked as desired:
% ipaste filename |
If the image isn't as you expected, repeat steps 3 through 8.
If you only want to snap part of a window, it's best to use snapshot. See “Tools and Where to Get Them” for more information about this capture utility.
Change to the directory where you are going to store the screen captures (this is usually the orig subdirectory of your working directory for a given book).
Decide what you're going to name the screen capture. (See “Screen Capture File Names” earlier in this chapter for some guidelines.)
Bring the window you want to capture to the front, leaving part of your shell window visible.
Start snapshot from the shell window:
% snapshot |
Use the right mouse button in the snapshot window to bring up the snapshot menu. Select “New file name” from that menu. Enter the name you want your screen capture to have. Press <Return>.
Move the snapshot window out of the way:
Move the cursor over the snapshot window.
Press <Alt>+F7.
Move the cursor; the snapshot window's outline moves with it.
Click the left mouse button when the window is where you want it.
With the cursor still in the snapshot window, hold down the <Shift> key to let snapshot retain keyboard and mouse focus.
Still holding down the <Shift> key, move the camera cursor into the window you want to capture.
Drag out a rectangle, using the left mouse button, around the portion you want to capture.
Move the cursor off to one side and, still keeping the <Shift> key depressed, use the right mouse button to bring up the snapshot menu. Choose “Save as filename” from that menu.
To make additional screen captures, repeat steps 7 through 10.
Use the same procedure for pull-down menus as for complete windows, except:
Use bsnap -s 5 to make bsnap delay five seconds before beginning the capture.
After you click in the window you're capturing from, quickly pull down the menu you want to capture. Keep it pulled down for several seconds, until bsnap finishes.
The snapshot utility (/usr/sbin/snapshot) is part of the IRIX 5.3 and later system software, in the eoe2.sw.gltools software subsystem.
InSight Professional Publisher includes three shell-script capture utilities, all of which can be found in /usr/share/Insight/bin:
bsnap: allows variable time delay with the -s command-line option. Includes window borders by default; to avoid window borders, use the -n option.
ssnap: identical to bsnap, except that after capturing a window it shrinks the window to 65% of its size in both horizontal and vertical directions, then brightens and sharpens the result.
winsnap: has no command-line options. Doesn't capture window borders.
All three scripts require /usr/sbin/scrsave (which is part of the eoe2.sw.gltools subsystem in the IRIX 5.3 and later distributions). ssnap also requires /usr/sbin/izoom and /usr/sbin/hipass3, both of which are part of the eoe2.sw.imagetools subsystem.
In addition to these tools, if you have an Indy™ system you probably have the /usr/sbin/capture utility installed on it. capture is part of the dmedia_tools.sw.movietools subsystem. It can capture images from an IndyCam™, a video input, or the screen. See the capture(1) reference page for more information.