Making this app a full featured screenshot editor

[joaoherberto]

Use case

Fork this application as a second path, a full featured screenshot editor.

Suggested solution

As a long time Shutter user, it is getting too hard to keep up with keeping the app running with all of it's GTK2 dependencies. The developer appears to have stopped supporting it.

Suggested additions:

• Add a pre-defined "Arrow" drawing to the current set of tools.
• Add Drop Shadow effect, Border, plus any others you can think of, but those two are all you need at first.
• Add three main capture tools; Entire screen, Selection, and Window

Possible drawbacks

More work for you.

Possible alternatives

Currently I have resorted to using Spectacle (KDE Screenshot tool) on my Manjaro Cinnamon Desktop, because it has a great screen selection tool that remembers the last position, and then I export it to Drawing. It works really well, just takes a few more steps on my part right now, but it is an 80% replacement for Shutter!

As for a name? Shotdrawing...Screendraw...Drawingtime...Grabon...Shotgrabber? I don't know, have a few drinks, it will come to you.

[maoschanz]

no i will not fork my own app to add a feature lol that would be insane

Add a pre-defined "Arrow" drawing to the current set of tools.

there is currently an option for it (to line and curve tools)

Add Drop Shadow effect, Border, plus any others you can think of, but those two are all you need at first.

Could you explain what you mean? I don't use any software in english so i've no idea what features you're talking about

Adding shadows to objects is one of the things listed in #21 and it's already done (and backported to the 0.4 branch) for the text tool, though not very elegantly. It has a border option too, so i assume it's not what you're asking?

Add three main capture tools; Entire screen, Selection, and Window

this one is #39

to summarize the issue (i didn't write anything useful in the ticket anyway lol), i'm not against including screenshoting features directly into this app, but:

• the easiest and most elegant way to do it is to use freedesktop portals (100% wayland compatibility, cross-DE support, pre-existing dialog to add a timer or select window/whole screen/area, etc.)
• i mainly develop and distribute the app as flatpak, so i don't have a lot of other possibilities anyway
• ~~the freedesktop portal works in such a way that the dialog won't work if Drawing doesn't already have a window opened!~~
  • ~~screenshoting the window of Drawing probably isn't what the user wants~~
  • ~~it's not very user-friendly to expect the user to minimize the window each time~~ edit: this issue is fine now actually
• both the portal and the approach i tried to hack around its issues add dependencies to the project
• even with these hacks, the portal saves the file in ~/Images (or ~/Pictures or whatever) but returns a path to /run/user/1000/doc/*, and it's pretty hard to get this screenshot back in the editor with either of these things

I've discussed about this last difficulty with a few GNOME devs on matrix and they told me to report the issue, which i haven't done yet because i have many other issues to fix before retrying this one

Also it's sad to add a dependency on something as huge as freedesktop portals just for one feature, i think a few native package maintainers would be pissed, so i wanted to add it as an option during the building process

---

Meanwhile if you want a screenshot-editing workflow with the current stable version of Drawing, you can read this https://github.com/maoschanz/drawing/issues/234#issuecomment-656674338 especially the beginning

[maoschanz]

here is the unstable version with the screenshot feature: drawing_0.5_all.deb.zip edit: but incorrect dependencies, you have to install some xdg-portals implementation

[joaoherberto]

Wow, was not expecting such a fast move on this, I run Arch based distro but I tried it Linux Mint, dialog box opens, but does not work. Not sure if it is because it is in a VM.

But I also found another project that is very similar to Shutter called Ksnip it works well, does not have the effects that Shutter had, but works well and has a applet menu item. The only drawback is that it is a QT app. Which by itself is not a big deal, but I do not trust the TrollTech.

[maoschanz]

such a fast move

i just brought back a branch i abandoned in 2019, the issues are still here

mostly, it works:

• on GNOME (not elementary, probably not KDE)
• if the app manages to get the path to your Pictures directory (works with deb, or flatpak development build, but not regular flatpak installation)

dialog box opens, but does not work. Not sure if it is because it is in a VM.

i want to try this, what version of mint was it?

[joaoherberto]

Linux Mint 20, latest.

[BlueCannonBall]

@joaoherberto Looks like you might be looking for an application like flameshot.

https://flameshot.js.org/

[maoschanz]

this is the Drawing issue tracker, not a forum about other apps