Summary of Responses to Screen-Capturing question

[Vincent J Guinto]

Awhile ago, I posted a long, tedious request for information.  I was
looking for a way to capture selected parts of a Sun 4 SPARC station
screen, in either raster files or PostScript files, and insert these files
into troff documents.

In that posting, I promised to summarize and post the replies I got. It's
been awhile, but here is that promised summary, along with a few
subsidiary requests.

1. First, this is what I've done successfully so far: I have dumped a
whole-screen screendump into a raster file, run rasfilter8to1 to remove
the color, then pssun to convert it to PostScript. You must then edit the
PostScript header and remove the initmatrix command and any translate or
scale commands, and it will insert into troff documents using some
AT&T-internally-developed add-on troff macros and software.

Note that this process works on Sun 3s, but I haven't tried it on a SPARC
station yet (I don't have one yet).  In my original posting, I asked if
anyone knew of any problems using the rasfilter8to1 and pssun commands
under Sun 4, but received no reply. (In case you can't tell from my
postings, I'm pretty ignorant about the distinctions between the Sun 3
operating system and Sun 4 OS.)

2. Someone mentioned a program by Ed Falk of Sun Microsystems called
"rast2ps" to convert a rasterfile to PostScript, but also said that the
program's output takes a very long time to print on a LaserWriter. Now, it
seems LaserWriters are known for somewhat slow PostScript printing times,
so that may not be a problem; I don't know.

3. The same person who mentioned "rast2ps" says his people are using parts
of an image processing package called FBM. I've never heard of this, and
don't want to mess around with large packages unles they offer a total
solution to my problem. Also, my group doesn't own the fileserver, and I
don't know how enthusiastically the owners will greet the request to add
large software packages.

4. Someone recommended the Publisher package from ArborText. He gave the
following contact information:

	ArborText, Inc.
	535 West William Street, Suite 300
	Ann Arbor, MI 48103

	313-996-3566

	Contact: Melanie Kesler, mdk at arbortext.com

   I haven't gotten any information from them yet.

5. OpenWindows 1.0 from Sun will capture windows and pieces of Sun screens
in raster files, but my impression is that this software exists only in
test form - i.e., it is not a finished product, isn't readily available,
and can require a lot of tech support from Sun. It runs about $200,
requires a minimum of 8MB of main memory, and is available for Sun 3's
(which means I can't use it - I need something for SPARC stations).

6. Someone pointed out that you can specify x and y coordinates to the
screendump command in the form:

	screendump -x xCorner -y yCorner -X width -Y height

This will dump to a file the same as a full screendump, and can be
converted to PostScript via rasfilter8to1 and pssun like I've already done
to full-screen screendumps.  A question following from this is how in the
world do you find out the coordinates of random points on the Sun screen?
Trial-and-error doesn't appeal to me.

7. A program called "dumpregion" is supposed to be either on the Rice
archive server or in the uunet archives.  It's supposed to make a
rasterfile of a screen portion that you mark out with the mouse. You can
then convert to PostScript as in #5 above (it's possible that both people
are talking about the same program, I don't know yet). Can someone without
remote ftp ability get a copy of this, and how?

[[Ed's Note: on titan, so the usual archive server commands/FTP address.
The files are sun-source/dumpregion.c and sun-source/dumpregion.diffs]]

8. Finally, someone recommended using public-domain software usable under
X-windows. This won't help me, because we're not using X-windows (I think)
and I don't want to do anything as complicated as install X-windows just
to get my graphics images.

9. We're doing an experiment here using FrameMaker software to capture
pieces of the screen in PostScript and raster files. The capturing goes
okay, but so far I haven't gotten anything that will insert into my troff
file and print properly. But, I haven't exhausted all the possibilities
with this yet.

10. Starting next week sometime, we're going to experiment with the Eroff
package from Elan Computer Group. It will supposedly insert rasterfiles
directly into troff documents, and its version of troff is supposedly 100%
compatible with standard UNIX troff, plus some other nice features.

I myself would like a solution that doesn't involve buying such a large
software package, but other people here are really enthusiastic about
eroff, and I guess it would be nice to have the flexibility of using
rasterfiles directly in addition to PostScript images.

Well, there is the summary, along with a couple additional questions.
Thanks to everyone who responded; I was (pleasantly) surprised at the
volume of email I received.  If anyone else has any ideas, my electronic
ears are always open!

Thanks again!
Vince Guinto                                  att!cblph!vjg
AT&T Bell Laboratories
Columbus, OH