DN465999155

Subject: Re: making an image of each widget - DN [1]

Brian Meagher <bmeagher@eurologic.com> - 13 Apr 1999 - comp.lang.tcl

 Hi John,

 John Klassa wrote:
 >
 > I have an app that I developed with Tcl/Tk...  I also have a tutorial for
 > it, that I developed as a series of web pages with images of relevant parts
 > of the main application.  Alas, as generally happens, the tutorial is
 > woefully out of date with respect to the application.
 >
 > I'd like to automate the process of creating an image (as, e.g., a GIF) of
 > each toplevel window and menu in the application.  I'm thinking that it
 > should be possible to launch the application, then have (what should be a
 > very short) script do "send" commands that will post each menu, create a
 > snapshot, and so forth.  With a series of images in hand, it'll be easy
 > to update the tutorial; if I have to create each image manually (as I
 > did for the first pass of the tutorial), things will get tedious in a
 > hurry. :-)
 >
 > I'm looking for pointers to existing code...

 I had similar thoughts a couple of years back (so there may be better tools
 available now), and came up with the following to snapshot toplevels:

 proc save_window {win filename {type gif}} {
         raise $win
         update
         exec xsnap -region [winfo geometry $win] -xpm -file /tmp/xsnap.xpm
 -noshow
         exec xpmtoppm </tmp/xsnap.xpm >/tmp/xsnap.ppm
         exec ppmto${type} </tmp/xsnap.ppm >$filename
         }

 If you want to snapshot a frame or widget WITHIN a toplevel I *think* that
 you'll need to do a "winfo geometry $win" to get the dimensions and "winfo
 rootx $win" and "winfo rooty $win" to get the screen position(, but I haven't
 tested this).

 The proc relies upon the following two software packages being installed on
 your system:

 xsnap
 =====

 A more recent version than mine is at
     ftp://ftp.x.org/R5contrib/xsnap-pl2.tar.Z

 Perhaps this newer version can save direct to gif, an eliminate the need for
 netpbm?

 netpbm
 ======

 Available from:

     ftp://ftp.x.org/R5contrib/netpbm-1mar1994.tar.gz

 I run these under Linux, YMMV.

 Regards,
 -Brian.
 ---
 Eurologic at NAB, Las Vegas, Nevada, Booth #S2618, April 19th-22nd 1999
 http://www.eurologic.com