Skip to main content
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index] [List Home]
[ecf-dev] Re: [mylyn-dev] RE: screen capture and exchange 
Eugene Kuleshov wrote:


I'd like to add few observations (probably somehow obvious):

<stuff deleted>
- ECF seem like have specific use cases, such as allow to select view or editor inside Workbench or window outside workbench that they want to send over IM, which for that use case would be more natural then crop.
Although selecting a view/window/workbench is a reasonable use case for ECF, I wouldn't rule out the desire to simply select and crop an arbitrary screen region as well.
Someone need to decide if something like this should be in scope, else it may make sense to prototype advanced window/region selection in the ECF codebase and generalize it later (ECF could still feed their captured image to the wizard/editor UI used to for annotation and then use results from that UI)
FWIW, we already have a very simple 'grabber' (i.e. wait 5 seconds, then select display region to send with cross hair cursor, then verify/approve snapshot to send). It's very lightweight, which is good for most of our use cases. That and sending via IM (xmpp and skype) is in ECF dailies.
But the point of the original posting was that, like ECF, a number of projects are doing user interfaces for screen capture...and unless cross-project coordination occurs there will be multiple probably rather different UIs for doing screen grabbing in Ganymede. Which isn't likely a great user experience, IMHO.
RE: Mik's note...filing bug against Mylyn is an option, but IMHO not desirable relative to Platform UI ownership. Is this impossible? 


Scott




regards,
Eugene


Mik Kersten wrote:
I’m happy putting Mylyn’s screen capture facility wherever it would have the most resources to be maintained and improve, as long as Mylyn can still continue to evolve it for its purposes of bug reporting and task sharing.
The main UI question that I think are relevant here is what the resulting UI and API should be, we’ve encountered two options:
1) Wizard style UI: very simple facility that takes a screen capture input (either via a desktop capture facility or clipboard), allows the user to do a crop step, and then another preview or markup step. This is Mylyn’s current UI (see http://www.eclipse.org/mylyn/new/ and look for “screen”).
2) Editor style UI: supports more features such as those in commercial tools like SnagIt, imposes additional complexity of an undo/redo and save lifecycle.
It is also feasible to extract what we currently have to support both UIs, but (2) would likely require a significant commitment of resources in order to get the UI and overlap with workspace resources working well. Either way, I’m happy exploring how to generalize what we have. In terms of next steps, the following could work well:
1) Someone files a bug against Mylyn on generalizing our screen capture facilities
2) Mylyn takes the first step in generalizing it, then the reporter attempts to build on the provisional API and we iterate
3) Once there are two working clients to the API (Mylyn and the reporter’s) we figure the best home(s) for the API (e.g. very generic stuff in SWT or Platform/UI and UI specific to tasks/bugs in Mylyn). 

Mik

*From:* Scott Lewis [mailto:slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
*Sent:* Wednesday, January 02, 2008 8:49 PM
*To:* Chris Aniszczyk
*Cc:* Boris Bokowski; Eclipse Communication Framework (ECF) developer mailing list.; mik@xxxxxxxxxxx; remy.suen@xxxxxxxxx 
*Subject:* Re: screen capture and exchange
I also think a image viewer editor would be/is fine...but IMHO also needed is some sort of consistent capture shell/dialog (i.e. to select screen region, entire display, window, or even view...with optional/configurable time delay and maybe some feedback during region select)...so that different UI isn't created for different serialization/persistence situations (e.g. save to file, send to buddy, add to task, etc).
I'm not completely sure a capture dialog goes with an image viewer...although I suppose it could. From our point of view the most desirable thing would be minimal dependencies, so it could be used in multiple contexts (i.e. not just in IDE/workbench). 

Scott


Chris Aniszczyk wrote:

That's exactly what I was saying in that bug report ;)
I think this is what we should shoot for. I want the base image viewer/editor stuff committed and then we can work on extensions. It should probably be moved to it's own plug-in IMHO too 

Cheers,

---
Chris Aniszczyk | IBM Lotus | Eclipse Committer | http://mea-bloga.blogspot.com | +1.860.839.2465
Inactive hide details for "Boris Bokowski" ---01/02/2008 08:32:36 PM---Would it make sense to put this functionality into (or n"Boris Bokowski" ---01/02/2008 08:32:36 PM---Would it make sense to put this functionality into (or next to) Eugene's image viewer? See https://b 


From:



"Boris Bokowski" <bokowski@xxxxxxxxx> <mailto:bokowski@xxxxxxxxx>


To:



"Scott Lewis" <slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> <mailto:slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>


Cc:
remy.suen@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:remy.suen@xxxxxxxxx>, Chris Aniszczyk/Austin/IBM@IBMUS, "Eclipse Communication Framework (ECF) developer mailing list." <ecf-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx> <mailto:ecf-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>, mik@xxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:mik@xxxxxxxxxxx> 


Date:



01/02/2008 08:32 PM


Subject:



Re: screen capture and exchange

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Would it make sense to put this functionality into (or next to) Eugene's image viewer? See https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=155323 <https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=155323>
I don't think we need a global toolbar or menu item for this in every product based on the IDE. But I understand that it would be good to have a hook in Platform IDE so that the various downstream projects or products can avoid duplication. 

Boris
On Jan 2, 2008 1:46 PM, Scott Lewis <slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote: 

Hi Remy, Chris, Boris, and Mik,

Remy...

I took a look at the screen capture add on to the collab example code,
and the problem that you (Remy) previously experienced was due to
limitations on the object serialization for very large objects
(ImageWrapper when the image data array was very large [i.e. 200Kbytes+,
etc]).

I added some basic compression (using zip...which is probably not
optimal, but does help), and added protocol to send the data as a set of
messages (see EclipseCollabSharedObject.sendImage) instead of a single
large message, and it works. I also did some other mild refactoring in
line with bug https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=160633 <https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=160633>. 
Obviously this was just done, so it's not yet in a
distribution/milestone release.

The reason I'm writing this to Remy, Chris, and Boris, is that I would
like us to consider adding more/better UI for doing screen capture (and
display of received screen captures)...and I would like to use this new
UI to also build in support for sending bits via the ECF datashare API
as well (so that screen shares can be done directly between people on
your buddy list as well as within collab session...i.e. via skype, xmpp,
etc). I imagine most of you have probably seen this blog posting:_
_http://www.jroller.com/eu/entry/capturing_screenshots

Perhaps we could use this as an opportunity to work with the Mylyn folks
(who already have a screen capture UI as in the posting, but arguably
should be better/generalized in line with some of their enhancement
requests), and perhaps the SWT/JFace/Platform UI folks (Boris?), or even
some of the Jazz folks (Chris?).

Clearly, it would be nice for all involved to have a consistent screen
capture UI, that then we (ECF) could add the ability to send the
captured image to buddies, and/or collab group members. Obviously, this
is a very common user desire/activity (exchanging screen shots)...which
is certainly why it's being built into Jazz, Mylyn, ECF, probably
others, etc., etc.

Scott

Back to the top