Screen grabber

[logout]

I wonder - is there any screen grabbing utility that could save screens in modes available on Q68 to any format directly readable on other computers? I searched through Dilwyn Jones Sinclair QL Pages and all I tools that I found were for MODE 4 / 8 screens only.
Thanks for pointing me to the right place

[desin]

Hello
screen_shots
Qsnap is part of the Q-Design package
try part of the screen
its saved as _pic file
conversion
there is Jonathan Hudsons unpic
it should convert _pic to GIF,BMP,PCX formats

hope it helps
Markus

[Artificer]

Hi Logout,

There are quite a few QL apps that can convert a QL screen grab from a Q68 to PC or other format but none that I know of that will directly convert QL screen data during a screen scrape directly to a BMP or jpeg.

But once a Q68 screen or part there of, is saved in pic format there are several apps the will covert the pic to PC and other formats. Dilwyn Jones BMP2QL will export to BMP and QT image will export to jpg. There are older command line apps CJPEG and DJPEG that also give accurate conversion from BMP to jpg.

Attached is a SBASIC program I use routinely to grab a full screen and save as a pic, called scrot after the linux app. Compile it with QLIB and put it on a hot key. As well an other program CLIPSCRAPBOARD csb218.zip on Dilwyn Jones downloads once installed besides clipping and pasting text from the apps and the screen will clip areas of the screen and save as pic files. Norman Dunbar also wrote a screen grabber, possibly only mode 4 called I think Grabbit.

Cheers

Artificer

[Andrew]

Attached is a SBASIC program I use routinely to grab a full screen and save as a pic, called scrot after the linux app.

Sorry, Artificer, but I couldn't hold back my laughter. In my native language scrot means scrotum (testicular sack)

[Artificer]

Andrew wrote :

In my native language scrot means scrotum (testicular sack)

You are thinking of scrote, the equivalent of gobshite or toerag.

Cheers

[NormanDunbar]

Norman Dunbar also wrote a screen grabber, possibly only mode 4 called I think Grabbit.

I fear you may have mistaken me for someone else! I wrote a couple of very bad ql2bmp and bmp2ql utilities many years ago, but never a screen grabber. At least, as far as I'm aware!


Cheers,
Norm.

[logout]

Attached is a SBASIC program I use routinely to grab a full screen and save as a pic, called scrot after the linux app.

Thanks for the BASIC. I managed to save the VRAM contents when I played with Dex's Q68 during last weekend and then converted it on PC with a short Python script I wrote and GIMP to a screenshot in PNG format. It made me read about various modes and their video RAM organisation and this BASIC made it even more clear to me.

I will probably try to get familiar with S*BASIC and create something, that can save the screen into something readable on PC/Mac. It sounds like a fun exercise and an excuse to use the (emulated) QL/Q68

[logout]

I started my attempt to create a screen grabber that will save in a format readable on other operating systems. I chose the Netpbm format (PPM, binary P6 variant) because it is a very simple and broadly supported picture format that can be displayed by Preview.app on macOS, by GIMP on Windows/macOS/Linux, and by a dozen apps on Windows. I use XnView, but there are other options.

The idea is:

1. Recognize the OS variant on which the grabber runs. As I am a newbie, the S*BASIC Reference Manual Online Documentation is my new best friend, and from it I got the idea that it is good to differentiate between plain QL with QDOS, anything with Minerva, and then anything with SMSQ/E, as there are different options on how to get the screen address, size, bit/byte order, etc.
2. Copy the screen to a buffer, so it will be saved as it was in the moment of running the tool, even if some other job will modify it during the saving.
3. Save the buffer in the PPM/P6 format, which is a 15-byte header plus three bytes for every pixel.

At the moment, I can do all this for plain QDOS and plain MODE 4. If running without compilation, it is painfully slow, but the result after converting on PC from PPM to PNG was OK, so it's a start.