Re: [Visualpython-users] Why no screenshot function?

[Bruce S. <Bru...@nc...>]

Now that the issues of images and movies have been talked through, it would be 
good if someone (or someones) would develop and test code for programmatically 
saving a screen image on Windows/Mac/Linux and offer it for inclusion in Visual. 
The design criteria would seem to be these:

1) Should work on all three platforms (which may mean three different mechanisms).

2) One output format is presumably sufficient. The simplest is probably targa 
(which is also used by Visual materials), and there are plenty of applications 
for converting targa to other formats. Targa files are basically just sequences 
of 3-byte RGB triples per pixel. But feel free to propose and support a 
different choice.

3) Include a proposed syntax for invoking the save.

I can't work on this myself because I'm deeply involved in the launch of a 3rd 
edition of a physics textbook.

Bruce Sherwood

P.S. On a related issue, there was a proposed patch to deal with some issues in 
packaging a stand-alone Visual application, but David Scherer and I concluded 
that the solution (to hunt around in various folders for material files) was not 
a maintainable scheme, so someone might like to look into this issue and propose 
a different solution.