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Screenshots using vector graphics (gtk3 apps only) (joachim-breitner.de)
89 points by beza1e1 on June 19, 2011 | hide | past | favorite | 22 comments



Qt's QPainter can actually serialize draw calls into SVG; I used that to make "SVG screenshots" of Qt apps from time to time. The resulting fidelity lacks some polish, and when the app buffers any rendering through pixmaps it has no choice but to embed raster data for those elements into the SVG which then can't scale, but it's a cute little trick nonetheless.


Chrome 14 advised me not to enter the site. "certificate not trusted".

Just a heads up.


Safari doesn't display the lock icon on that site either ...

However it seems that it is a CACert signed certificate, so you may download the root certificates and add them to your browser/OS from here: http://www.cacert.org/index.php?id=3


You can connect without https, that seems to work: http://www.joachim-breitner.de/blog/archives/494-Better-PDF-...


Looks like they haven't installed the cert chain properly, which is a bit embarrassing since it's easy to check.

CAcert Class 3 Root is the issuer.

Link: https://www.wormly.com/test_ssl/


I get a warning on Firefox 5 too.


Too bad your only choices in Firefox are:

1) Add a permanent exception and forget about it

2) Add a permanent exception and remember to remove it later

3) Not view the content

Personally, I'm wondering where option #4 is:

4) I want to view the content of this webpage, but I don't want to permanently except this certificate because what I'm doing now isn't a high security risk (viewing a blog post about GTK3), but I may end up doing something with a high security risk on this site in the future and I don't want to have an exception at that point.

E.g., if the cert is for *.skype.com, I may want to view https://blog.skype.com without worrying about self-signed/invalid certs, but I might actually care about certs when it comes to https://shop.skype.com.


I have the option to not make it permanent at the bottom of the dialog in 4.0.1 on OS X. By default, it's checked, but it is also clearly there for me.

Edit: A screenshot, for anybody that doesn't see it: http://i.imgur.com/rkZ4c.png Just above "Confirm Security Exception" is the checkbox.


Bad UI then. I never got that far. The button on the "WARNING!" page says "Add Exception..." which leads me to believe that it will not be temporary. If it is a temporary exception, then why do I need to add it anywhere.

(Firefox 4.0.1 Linux)


Compare with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_postscript pioneered for NeXT; a derivative is used by MacOS X.


DPS wasn't a NeXT product. They shipped the same Adobe code that had been in use on SunOS NeWS for 3+ years (and in fact on hardware that was very similar to the Sun 3 workstations).

NeXT did more with it, and clearly NeWS failed in the face of X windows in Sun's market.


Just noticed at X and T follow W and S in the alphabet too...


Jobs would never, ever, under no circumstances, allow that.

Could it be someone suggested "NeXT" as a prank?


If it wasn't for the lowercase 'e' I might have thought it was a coincidence!


Very cool. But can you use it to take vector screenshots?

I manage to take screenshots as pdf:

    defaults write com.apple.screencapture type pdf
    killall SystemUIServer
Unfortunately, this just gives me a pdf with rasterized graphics.


I don't believe you can in OS X - even though it's vector drawn, a lot of assets are raster.

Apple pushed (weakly) a "Resolution Independent" interface in 10.4 (I think) that would have promised drawing the screen at whatever DPI you want without looking terrible (and giving people who want larger text a better option than decreasing resolution)

It didn't really happen; though, and recently I remember seeing them push pixel-doubled assets, ostensibly in preparation for desktop retina displays in the future.

I didn't know GTK3 was vector drawn - that's really awesome!


Resolution independence in OS X didn't happen because of UX issues - if given a very small space (16x16 or 32x32), a hand crafted pixel icon will generally look better than a scaled down vector icon.

For examples, compare the sidebar Finder icons with their full size counterparts, especially in the Places subsection. Some are scaled down versions of the larger icons (Documents, for example), whereas some are stylistic extractions (Downloads becomes a green download arrow in a circle).

I'd hope that when 2x mode comes to OS X for high resolution displays, when you take a screenshot in 1x mode it would use the 2x mode assets to create a higher resolution screencap, but that does sound like a lot of work for a very minor feature that would increase screenshot size.


This is why Gtk+ implements icons as a set of vector / raster images to be displayed at various sizes. It makes resolution independence really easy. This has been important to Gtk and GNOME for a long time since it's a big issue for accessibility which is not only important socially and morally, but actually a key legal issue for adoption in large companies and governments.


If I'm not mistaken the screenshots in the manual for Altsys Virtuoso (basically FreeHand for the NeXT) were Display Postscript captures.


editor: please change link from https to http? thanks.



I remember this used to be possible in the classic MacOS (System 7, technically it wasn't called "MacOS" back then). The native PICT image format was just QuickDraw graphics API calls serialized to a binary file, so there was a screenshot program that would simply record the API calls made, and save them to a PICT file.




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