Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!natinst!rpp386!garnett
From: garnett@rpp386.cactus.org (John Garnett)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aix
Subject: Print-Screen under AIX ?
Keywords: aix ps/2 rt print screen device driver
Message-ID: <17347@rpp386.cactus.org>
Date: 22 Nov 89 00:43:11 GMT
Organization: USENET Users' Anonymous
Lines: 43

Hello AIX'ers,

I would like to be able press the print screen key on my AIX PS/2 or
AIX/RT keyboard and have the contents of the screen dumped to the
default print queue (or to a user defined print queue - specified
by an environment variable).  Currently, this feature is available
in AIX only if the application one is running happens to support
print screen (such as WHIP).  Most AIX programs (in particular 
telnet) do not implement print-screen.  Needless to say, pressing
print-screen from the shell prompt merely produces the escape
sequence generated by the print-screen key.

I've had a few thoughts on how this might be accomplished:

1) write a device driver that polls for the print screen key and
   dumps the contents of the memory segment that corresponds
   to the on screen text when the print screen key is pressed.
   To all of you who may have written AIX device drivers in the
   past - how tough would this be to do?  Rather than dumping
   screen memory, perhaps I could interface with the hft display driver
   in some fashion?  I assume that the hft driver saves the contents
   of the screen since the alt-action key sequence switches among
   virtual sessions (converting a non-displayed session into the
   active displayed session).

2) use X-Windows and write a client that reads and dumps the contents
   of a user-selected window.  I've seen programs that can dump windows
   as graphics (such as xwps3) but I really just want the data
   in ascii character format.  Is this possible?

3) modify the xterm sources that come with AIX PS/2 X Examples so that
   it responds to the print-screen key.  Has anyone already done this?

I'm really looking for how to do #1, but ideas on #'s 2 and 3 will help.

Thanks for any information,

John Garnett
-- 
+------------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| John Garnett                       |      Base 1.9                     |
| garnett@rpp386.cactus.org          |                                   |
| {bigtex|texbell}!rpp386!garnett    |      "It's almost binary"         |