Re: Autogenerating screenshots

[Ben Pfaff]

John Darrington <address@hidden> writes:

> On Thu, Jan 05, 2012 at 09:15:32PM -0800, Ben Pfaff wrote:
>      
>      Does it need xvfb just to keep windows from showing up on the
>      user's X display while it runs?  GTK+ has GtkOffscreenWindow that
>      might be a way to avoid that.  Then we could at least avoid
>      adding one (rather unusual) dependency.
>
> Well you need an X server in order to "display" the dialog.  Many years
> ago I tried other ways of doing this sort of thing on the current 
> display.  The problem is, that the script cannot in general get control
> over that display - eg to set resolution, colours etc.  Also, a lot
> of problems arise from other interactions with the display (eg:
> "You must not move the mouse while the screenshot program is running").
>
> Having a display dedicated to the window I'm trying to capture makes
> the job a lot easier.
>
> An advantage of xvfb is that I can tell it to start with a particular 
> resolution - even if the machine's graphics hardware doesn't support such 
> a resolution (or has no graphics hardware at all).  
>
> I haven't really paid much attention to GtkOffscreenWindow so I don't
> know if it would make the job any easier.

I think it's fine to depend on xvfb if it produces better or more
reliable results or even if it's just easier to implement.  I
just wondered if you'd considered that alternate approach.
-- 
Ben Pfaff 
http://benpfaff.org