TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:screen cap & other utils for UNIX ? From:Stuart Burnfield <slb -at- FS -dot- COM -dot- AU> Date:Tue, 25 Feb 1997 10:06:45 +0800
Al Rubottom said:
> I'm about to start work on a UNIX app. . . and I would like to
> have some helpful tools to capture screens [character only, no GUI]
> and such, in order to have these for use in the manual(s) later.
> Does anyone know of such elementary UNIX tools, utils, et al.?
Al, I capture UNIX screens, both GUI and character mode, for software
manuals. The manuals are produced in FrameMaker under Solaris and
Windows 95.
I use XV to capture the screens and save them in compressed TIFF format.
I found when I switched from Word to FrameMaker that Frame has a bug in
its handling of LZW-compressed TIFFs. About a quarter of my screens come
out garbled. The fix or workaround is to open these files in ImageMagick
(UNIX) or Paint Shop Pro (Windows) and save it again as a compressed
TIFF. I assume these programs use a less aggressive algorithm -- the
files are slightly larger but work fine in Frame.
I like XV better for capturing screens. ImageMagick has a weird, clunky
graphical interface, but it's very powerful and has a vast number of
options for manipulating, merging and transforming images. It also has
a command-line interface, so you can automate some actions through
scripts.
Here are a few other UNIX public-domain tools you might like to look at:
Compression: gzip/gunzip.
MTools: a set of commands to read & write DOS diskettes in a UNIX drive
e.g. MCOPY, MDEL, MDIR, MCD. Handy if you don't have a network
connection between your UNIX and Windows drives.
PostScript: pstools is a set of utilities for manipulating PS files --
e.g. print 2-up or 4-up on a page, reorder pages into booklet
order
xdeview: decodes various file formats (BinHex, uuencode, etc)
Others:
ical is a nice calendar/todo list.
xvtdl is a GUI To Do list program. I don't use it but others here like it.
xpostit -- post-it notes.
TECHWR-L (Technical Communication) List Information: To send a message
to 2500+ readers, e-mail to TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU -dot- Send commands
to LISTSERV -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU (e.g. HELP or SIGNOFF TECHWR-L).
Search the archives at http://www.documentation.com/ or search and
browse the archives at http://listserv.okstate.edu/archives/techwr-l.html
