Re: gnome-utils branched for GNOME 2.16

[Bryan Clark <bclark redhat com>]

Wouter Bolsterlee wrote:
> På Tue, Sep 05, 2006 at 11:41:03AM -0400, JP Rosevear skrev:
>   
> > On Mon, 2006-09-04 at 13:17 -0500, Shaun McCance wrote:
> >     
> > > On Mon, 2006-09-04 at 12:22 +0100, Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
> > >       
> > > > Hi Jeff;
> > > >
> > > > On Mon, 2006-09-04 at 21:01 +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > > >         
> > > > > <quote who="Emmanuele Bassi">
> > > > > 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.
> > > >         
> > > I've outlined a proposal for this at least twice,
> > > but I can't find the original emails, so I'll do
> > > it again.
> > >
> > > When you call up the screenshot utility from the
> > > Applications menu, it should bring up a dialog
> > > asking you what you want to do.  The dialog would
> > > look something like this:
> > >
> > >  ________________________________________________
> > > |                                                |
> > > | ( ) Take screenshot of entire screen.          |
> > > |     * Use PrntScrn to do this at any time.     |
> > > |                                                |
> > > | ( ) Take screenshot of a single window.        |
> > > |     * Use Alt+PrntScrn to do this at any time. |
> > > |                                                |
> > > |                           [Cancel]   [Shoot]   |
> > > |________________________________________________|
> > >
> > >       
> > Needs a delay option as well probably.  ie "wait 3 seconds" and then
> > take the shot.
> >     
> That would be a welcome addition, yes. However, please make it a global
> option in the dialog instead of the double timeout widgets in Gimp's 2.2
> series...
Wow, it's gnome-utils branch deja vu all over again! [1] :)

I think it's time to take a couple steps back from this and talk about 
the experience you're expecting to enable with the screenshot app.  
We're starting to wind down the hole of adding in features and I'm not 
sure where we're going with it.  I'm pretty sure I designed the current 
screenshot dialog last year or so with jrb and our goal was to let you 
quickly see the preview of your screenshot, the file name and the 
directory that file would be saved to.  The use case was something like 
shaunm or other people who are taking a number of screenshots of 
different windows and the whole desktop and I think we nailed that 
pretty well.
Of course this addition is only for the the application menu launch 
which I think is a nice trick to help out new people and advanced 
users.  However on my long drive to work this morning I was wondering if 
we couldn't just take individual screenshots of the applications as well 
as a whole screenshot all at once.  Doesn't composite or something allow 
this?  I mean we don't have flying cars yet in 2006, but I was hoping we 
could at least get this little improvement.  And I think it would help 
everyone (first time screenshotters, plus advance types) if the 
screenshot dialog just gave me a screenshot of the whole desktop plus 
individual screenshots of each application.  Maybe it allows me to 
select which one I'd like to save?
I'm not saying a delay option wouldn't be a good thing as well.  Perhaps 
we include a [Take another with a {5} second delay] button so you can 
reset windows and such.  But what we need is to discuss a little bit of 
how we expect people to use this and what for.  Shaun had a great email 
explaining his use of the screenshot tool from back in feb. [2], that's 
the kind of discussion that will allow us to see the problems we need to 
solve from the actions we have the ability to implement.
Myself, I use the screenshot tool a lot as well.  My use case is mostly 
taking a screenshot of a specific web page or application and then using 
the GIMP on the screenshot to extract some image or widget I need from 
the shot.  Often I'm taking a couple screenshots and doctoring up some 
mockups that are based off an initial application.  For me the 
screenshot tool works pretty well for this, I would like some faster way 
to work with a screenshot in GIMP after I've taken it, however I think 
that needs to be done outside of the screenshot dialog. [3]  Very seldom 
do I need a delay to setup up a screenshot, back when I was working on 
NetworkManager I needed that delay to catch the drop down menu so we 
could design what would be inside of it.  However the realization that I 
couldn't screenshot the drop down menu without a delay always came after 
the fact that my first screenshot didn't work.  I was thinking a delay 
button in the dialog would help with this.  Perhaps this means we could 
change alt-prntscrn to be the delay shot (with the last used delay) 
since prntscrn is taking a screenshot of everything anyway?  I also have 
some visualizations I'd like tied into the delayed screenshot  so you 
know how much time you have in your delay.
Cheers,
~ Bryan

[1] 
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2006-February/thread.html#00069
[2] 
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2006-February/msg00054.html
[3]  I'm pretty sure there's a bug somewhere I got CC'd on about opening 
screenshots directly into GIMP, I feel like this is the wrong place for 
that.  Instead I think we could do something like tagging a screenshot 
with 'screenshot' category and GIMP should be aware of new screenshots 
created when I go to use it (just an idea).