9-12-02

Simple Screen Capture for Jaguar by Erick Tejkowsi

Mac OS X 10.2 added a new command line tool called screencapture. This handy command lets you take screenshots in all sorts of ways. The problem? There are so many options that it begins to become difficult to remember what everything does. REALbasic comes to the rescue! Today we'll build a simple 5-minute project that lets you add an interface to this powerful new command line tool.

Build the Interface

The interface this week is really simple to create: one PushButton and two RadioButtons. When you add them to a window, leave their default names as is. (i.e. PushButton1, RadioButton1, and RadioButton2).

• PushButton1 - Caption = "Capture"
• RadioButton1 - Caption = "Clipboard"
• RadioButton2 - Caption = "File on Desktop"

Arrange the interface any way you want. Mine looks like this:

Source Code

Like the interface, the code this week is also simple. Double-click PushButton1 and add the following code to its Action event:

  
  Dim s As Shell
  dim d as date
  dim f as string 
  
  //NOTE: Mac OS X 10.2 or higher required
  s=New Shell
  If TargetCarbon then
    if radioButton1.value then
      //capture to the clipboard
      s.execute "screencapture -c"
    else 
      //capture to a file
      d=new date 
      f = str(d.totalSeconds)+".pdf"
      s.execute "screencapture ~/Desktop/" + f 
    end if
    If s.errorCode<>0 then
      MsgBox "Error Code: "+Str(s.errorCode)
    end if
  end if
  

Keep in mind that this project only covers a few options available to you with the new screencapture command. To learn about the other features, use the man command:

    man screencapture

With just a little effort, it wouldn't be too tough to add the rest of the options.

Conclusion

That's it for this week. Select Debug->Run to test your work. As usual, you can download the finished project. See you next week!

9-10-02

REALbasic News by Erick Tejkowsi

Game Creation - MWRB
SilverNetworks has released a bug fix release for their free game creation program, SilverCreator, version 1.0.1. You can download SilverCreator v1.0.1 now for OS 7.5.5 - 9.2.2 and Mac OS X. All of the runtime packages are included for easy compiling.And, of course, SilverNetworks is Maade with REALbasic.

I Declare!
Kevin Ballard has updated the popular Carbon Declare Library. It includes a few new functions and some bug fixes. Check it out!

Apple GUI Guide
Apple has posted an informative piece for "switchers" (read: ex-Windows geeks) about the Mac OS interface. Despite being intended for the "switching" crowd, it serves as a nice introduction to some important GUI features of Mac OS X, which you can put to use in your everyday REALbasic activities.

Marc Zeedar Tutorial and Review
Marc Zeedar begins his coverage of the latest REALbasic release by looking at the many subtle improvements in REALbasic 4.5. While we're on the topic of Marc, you can also find a handy tutorial by him called SimplePaint

easyPalette
fracturedSoftware has announced the release of easyPalette preview1. easyPalette makes it fast and easy to add cross platform, customisable tearoff palettes to your REALbasic project ( win32 palettes will be available in the next release ).

PrintWindow
For those who would like to print things under RB (e.g. text, styled text or graphics) on Windows and Mac, Tony Barry has made available an RB project called PrintWindow. What does it do?

• It provides a styled editField which you can type into, and print from.
• It gets around the current dysfunctional StyledTextPrinter on Windows, which does not print styles at present.
• It also provides a Print Preview window, to save paper and show what the printer will actually print.
• No plugins are used in the project. It is being released as donationware, and the source code is ... well, all there.

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