# The &ksnapshot; Handbook

Richard
J.
Moore

    rich@kde.org

Robert
L.
McCormick

    c0029131@airmail.net

Brad
Hards

    bradh@frogmouth.net

Lauri
Watts

    lauri@kde.org

Reviewer
Richard
J
Moore

    rich@kde.org

Developer
Matthias
Ettrich

    ettrich@kde.org

Developer
1997-2000
Richard J. Moore
2000
Matthias Ettrich
&FDLNotice;
2005-02-02
1.02.00

&ksnapshot; is a simple applet for taking screenshots. It is capable of capturing images of the whole desktop, a single window or a selected region. The images can then be saved in a variety of formats.

KDE
KSnapshot
kdegraphics
screen capture
screen grab

## Introduction

&ksnapshot; is a simple applet for taking screenshots. It is capable of capturing images of the whole desktop, a single window or a selected region. The images can then be saved in a variety of formats.

Please report any problems or feature requests to the KDE Bug Tracking System

## Using &ksnapshot;

This chapter describes the use of &ksnapshot; for capturing screen images.

### Starting &ksnapshot;

&ksnapshot; may be started by one of several ways as described below.

- You may start &ksnapshot; by selecting it from the Graphics submenu of the panel.

- You may start &ksnapshot; by entering the following at the command prompt:

      % ksnapshot &

- The mini command line (invoked with &Alt;F2) may also be used to start &ksnapshot;

Once &ksnapshot; starts, you will see a window like the following: &ksnapshot; Preview Window

### Taking A Snapshot

&ksnapshot; grabs an image of your entire desktop immediately after it is started, but before it displays itself on screen. This allows you to quickly create full-desktop screenshot images.

The snapshot taken by &ksnapshot; is displayed in the preview window, which is located in the upper left of the &ksnapshot; application window. Below is an example of the preview window from &ksnapshot;. Your preview will differ depending on what you have displayed on the desktop.

&ksnapshot; Preview Window

The snapshot can be saved by clicking on the Save As... button. If multiple snapshots are taken, the filename is automatically incremented to prevent you from overwriting previous snapshots. You may however edit the filename to anything you wish, including the name of a previously saved snapshot.

To take a snapshot of a single window, select the Window Under Cursor combo box entry (next to the Capture mode: label), and then click on the New Snapshot button.

Depending on your Snapshot delay: settings you get either a cross as the mouse pointer (for No delay), or a standard mouse cursor which you can use to work with a program until the delay is over and a snapshot is taken.

With No delay, the snapshot is taken immediately when you click in a window.

&ksnapshot; will display the new snapshot in the preview area, at which time you can choose to save the new image (by pressing Save As...) or to grab a new one, by pressing the New Snapshot button.

To take a new snapshot of the entire desktop, select the Full Screen combo box entry (next to the Capture mode: label), and then click on the New Snapshot button. &ksnapshot; will now capture the entire desktop if you press New Snapshot.

Similarly, to take a snapshot of a region, select the Region combo box entry (next to the Capture mode: label) and set the Snapshot delay to No delay, and then click on the New Snapshot button. The mouse cursor will then change into a cross, and you can then use the mouse to select the region you want to capture.

### Additional Features

#### Snapshot Delay

The Snapshot Delay: box allows you to enter an arbitrary time delay, in seconds, between the time that you press the New Snapshot button and the time that the snapshot is taken.

When a delay time has been set, you do not have to click the mouse button to capture a screenshot. This enables you to open a drop down menu, and take a picture of it.

#### Exclude Window decorations

Include window decorations is enabled by default.

When you only want to capture the application itself without the surrounding window decoration, disable this option and take a new snapshot.

#### Print

When you want to print your snapshot from the preview, just click Print... and you get the standard KDE Print dialog, from where you can directly print your snapshot.

#### Buttons

There are two further buttons located at the bottom of the &ksnapshot; window. There function is described below.

Help

  Gives you a menu where you can open the &ksnapshot; Handbook, report a bug or get some more information about &kde; and &ksnapshot;.

Quit

  Quits the &ksnapshot; application.

## &DCOP; Interface

&ksnapshot; can be scripted using its &DCOP; interface. This chapter explains the various &DCOP; calls that you can use, and provides some examples of how you can use them.

As with all DCOP calls, you need to specify the application you want to interace with, and the particular interface. With &ksnapshot; you need to identify which particular application, which is `ksnapshot-` followed by the process number.

To start &ksnapshot; and obtain the right argument, use `dcopstart ksnapshot`, which returns the argument (such as `ksnapshot-20594`) on standard output.

You can get a list of the available &DCOP; interfaces, use the right arguments, as shown in this example:

    $ dcop `dcopstart ksnapshot` interface
    QCStringList interfaces()
    QCStringList functions()
    QString url()
    void slotGrab()
    void slotPrint()
    void slotSave()
    bool save(QString filename)
    void slotSaveAs()
    void slotCopy()
    void setTime(int newTime)
    int timeout()
    void setURL(QString newURL)
    void setGrabMode(int grab)
    int grabMode()
    void slotMovePointer(int x,int y)
    void exit()

In the examples following, the process is always `ksnapshot-23151`.

### &DCOP; Access to Settings

For each of the settings that you can control with the GUI, you can both obtain the current status of that setting, and modify the setting, using &DCOP;.

You can obtain the current capture mode using the `grabMode` call, as shown below:

    $ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface grabMode

This will return `0` for full-screen capture, `1` for window capture, and `2` for region capture.

You can set the capture mode using the `setGrabMode`, which requires an argument to identify the mode required (as for the `grabMode` call). So you can set window capture mode (`1`), using:

    $ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface setGrabMode 1

You can obtain the current timeout setting (the Snapshot delay: GUI item) using the `timeout` call, as shown below:

    $ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface timeout

This will return the timeout setting in seconds, or zero if there is no delay (click on capture).

You can set the timeout using the `setTime`, which requires an argument to identify the timeout duration. So you can set a delay of 4 seconds using:

    $ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface setTime 4

You can obtain the path that the snapshot will be saved to using the `url` call, as shown below:

    $ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface url

This will return the filename, as a URL (eg as `file:///home/bradh/test2.png`).

You can set the path using the `setURL` command, which requires a string argument to identify the new path. So you can set the path to `file:///home/bradh/snapshot4.jpg` using:

    $ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface setURL file:///home/bradh/snapshot.jpg

### Taking Screenshots with &DCOP;

The key to taking screenshots with &DCOP; is use of the `slotGrab` command, as shown below:

    $ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface slotGrab

This will take a snapshot using the current snapshot mode and timeout settings (as described above). If you want to save the snapshot image, there are a number of calls you can use. If you just want to save the image to the current path (as returned by `url`) or changed by `setURL`), you can call `slotSave`, as shown below:

    $ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface slotSave

If you want the user to be able to specify a filename (and path), you can use `slotSaveAs`, which will bring up a standard &kde; file save dialog.

If you want to save the image to a different name (or path) without changing the path with `setURL`, you can use `save`, providing the URL to save to as an argument. So if you want to save the snapshot to `file:///tmp/tempshot.png`, you can do the following:

    $ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface save file:///tmp/tempshot.png

Note that this will return true if the snapshot was successfully saved, and false otherwise. Also, you should be aware that if the file already exists, the user will get a standard &kde; dialog that requires the user to decide whether to overwrite or not.

In addition to saving the snapshot, you can also copy it to the clipboard, using the `slotCopy` command, as shown below:

    $ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface slotCopy

If you need to select a window that may not be under the mouse cursor, you can use the `slotMovePointer` call, passing the x position (in screen pixels) and the y position (also in screen pixels) as arguments. So to move the mouse to the top left hand corner of the screen (0,0), you can do the following:

    $ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface slotMoveMouse 0 0

### Printing Screenshots with &DCOP;

You can print the current screenshot (which may or may not have been saved) using the `printSlot` command, as shown below:

    $ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface slotPrint

Note that this will bring up the normal &kde; print dialog, which may require user interaction.

### &DCOP; Application control

You can cause &ksnapshot; to exit by using the `exit` command, as shown below.

    $ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface exit

## Credits and License

Program copyright

- 1997-2000 Richard J. Moore rich@kde.org

- 2000 Matthias Ettrich ettrich@kde.org

Documentation based on the original, copyright 1997-2000 Richard J. Moore rich@kde.org

&underFDL; &underGPL;

&documentation.index;