RE: Capturing display file images for documentation

[Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Steve,

> I've never used those tools. I've just created a text box in Word, and done
> a cut and paste from the emulation window to the text box. Then I choose a
> monospaced font like Courier to align the characters. I can then resize the
> Text in the window as needed to fit the box. Choosing borders can place a
> sharp cornered or rounded border around the text.  I've never tried to
> capture any graphics like this, only green text screens.

If you do it that way, you lose the underlines, column separators,
reverse-image, bold, colors, etc.  The colors don't matter that much, but
I've had users who've been very confused by the loss of underlines and
reverse image.

Personally, I like to set my color scheme to black on white, capture an
image of the screen as a .bmp file, and bring that into Word.  The black
on white scheme allows it to work nicely when printed on a b&W laswer
printer.

When I do this in Windows, I use the open-source tn5250 software
(http://tn5250.sourceforge.net) where I specify +black_on_white and
copymode=bitmap in my config file.  Then I can just copy/paste the screen
straight into word without worry about window decorations or special
programs like snagit.

When I'm in FreeBSD, which is most of the time, I use the same open-source
tn5250 with +black_on_white, but I use The Gimp to do the screen captures,
and I paste the results into Open Office.