I don't use the CLI.
I just associate the commands with a keyboard shortcut--much faster than waiting for the GUI to come up to choose my option.
Two of them you don't even have to know the command for. You can just define them in System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts
The last (gnome-screenshot --delay 5) you'd have to associate the command manually, but after that you could just press the key combination--no terminal necessary.
I can't make head or tails of these instructions for KSnapshot. What's DCOP?
Chapter 3. DCOP Interface
KSnapshot can be scripted using its DCOP interface. This chapter explains the various DCOP calls that you can use, and provides some examples of how you can use them.
As with all DCOP calls, you need to specify the application you want to interface with, and the particular interface. With KSnapshot you need to identify which particular application, which is ksnapshot- followed by the process number.
To start KSnapshot and obtain the right argument, use dcopstart ksnapshot, which returns the argument (such as ksnapshot-20594) on standard output.
You can get a list of the available DCOP interfaces, use the right arguments, as shown in this example:
$ dcop `dcopstart ksnapshot` interface
QCStringList interfaces()
QCStringList functions()
QString url()
void slotGrab()
void slotPrint()
void slotSave()
bool save(QString filename)
void slotSaveAs()
void slotCopy()
void setTime(int newTime)
int timeout()
void setURL(QString newURL)
void setGrabMode(int grab)
int grabMode()
void slotMovePointer(int x,int y)
void exit()
In the examples following, the process is always ksnapshot-23151.
DCOP Access to Settings
For each of the settings that you can control with the GUI, you can both obtain the current status of that setting, and modify the setting, using DCOP.
You can obtain the current capture mode using grabMode, as shown below:
$ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface grabMode
This will return 0 for full-screen capture, 1 for window capture, and 2 for region capture.
You can set the capture mode using setGrabMode, which requires an argument to identify the mode required (as for grabMode). So you can set window capture mode (1), using:
$ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface setGrabMode 1
You can obtain the current timeout setting (the Snapshot delay: GUI item) using timeout, as shown below:
$ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface timeout
This will return the timeout setting in seconds, or zero if there is no delay (capture on click).
You can set the timeout using setTime, which requires an argument to identify the timeout duration. So you can set a delay of 4 seconds using:
$ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface setTime 4
You can obtain the path that the snapshot will be saved to using url, as shown below:
$dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface url
This will return the filename, as a URL (eg as file:///home/bradh/test2.png).
You can set the path using setURL, which requires a string argument to identify the new path. So you can set the path to file:///home/bradh/snapshot.jpg using:
$ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface setURL file:///home/bradh/snapshot.jpg
Taking Screenshots with DCOP
The key to taking screenshots with DCOP is use of slotGrab, as shown below:
$ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface slotGrab
This will take a snapshot using the current snapshot mode and timeout settings (as described above). If you want to save the snapshot image, there are a number of calls you can use. If you just want to save the image to the current path (as returned by url or changed by setURL), you can use slotSave, as shown below:
$ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface slotSave
If you want the user to be able to specify a filename (and path), you can use slotSaveAs, which will bring up a standard KDE file save dialog.
If you want to save the image to a different name (or path) without changing the path with setURL, you can use save, providing the URL to save to as an argument. So if you want to save the snapshot to file:///tmp/tempshot.png, you can do the following:
$ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface save file:///tmp/tempshot.png
Note that this will return true if the snapshot was successfully saved, and false otherwise. Also, you should be aware that if the file already exists, the user will get a standard KDE dialog that requires the user to decide whether to overwrite or not.
In addition to saving the snapshot, you can also copy it to the clipboard, using slotCopy, as shown below:
$ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface slotCopy
If you need to select a window that may not be under the mouse cursor, you can use slotMovePointer, passing the x position (in screen pixels) and the y position (also in screen pixels) as arguments. So to move the mouse to the top left hand corner of the screen (0,0), you can do the following:
$ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface slotMoveMouse 0 0
Printing Screenshots with DCOP
You can print the current screenshot (which may or may not have been saved) using printSlot, as shown below:
$ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface slotPrint
Note that this will bring up the normal KDE print dialog, which may require user interaction.
DCOP Application control
You can cause KSnapshot to exit by using exit, as shown below.
$ dcop ksnapshot-23151 interface exit And the man page doesn't offer much:
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents briefly the KSnapshot KDE Application. This manual page was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution because the original program does not have a manual page. KSnapshot is a simple applet for taking screenshots. It is capable of capturing images of either the whole desktop or just a single window. The images can then be saved in a variety of formats.
KDE Screenshot utility This program is part of the official KDE graphics module.
Generic options:
--help
Show help about options
--help-qt
Show Qt specific options
--help-kde
Show KDE specific options
--help-all
Show all options
--author
Show author information
-v, --version
Show version information
--license
Show license information
--
End of options
SEE ALSO
The full documentation for KSnapshot is maintained as a docbook manual. If the khelpcenter program is properly installed at your site, the command
khelpcenter help:/ksnapshot
should give you access to the complete manual.
AUTHOR
KSnapshot was written by Richard J. Moore <rich@kde.org>, Matthias Ettrich <ettrich@kde.org> and Aaron J. Seigo <aseigo@olympusproject.org>.
Please use http://bugs.kde.org to report bugs, do not mail the authors directly.
This manual page was prepared by Karolina Lindqvist <pgd-karolinali@algonet.se> for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).