Re: Getting quality screen shots: update

Hello John,

Am 24.05.2023 um 17:09 schrieb John Yeung <gallium.arsenide@xxxxxxxxx>:

I think the issue is not PDF per se. The images were scaled down to a ridiculously small and low-fidelity version in both the Word and PDF output. At that size, the results would not be good in any format whatsoever.

Hmm, I have not seen them. Did I miss something?

Since legibility is the most critical in 132-column mode, I always optimize for that.

Same here.

The extra empty space in 80-column mode is a very, very tiny price to pay for sane font behavior.

I fully agree.

The results of truly copying "just the text" would be horrible, without inordinate post-processing to put in the underlines and such, which are a vital element for a person reading the document to connect what's in the docs with what they see on a live screen.

I haven't said that it's easy. :-)

And some things might not even work at all as true text, like the cursor, rule
line, and column separators.

Cursor: Granted, but not sure if it's visibility it *that* much critical. Rule lines are a thing I often switch on by accident on a real terminal. And instantly off, again. :-) And, for any 5250 client, column separators are one of the first things I switch off, also: So I can use color freely without those nasty separator lines being completely useless to me. But that's just me. Others might of course have different opinions.

I don't see it as a viable option at all.

Well, that depends.

But now you've got me brainstorming.

The emulator software itself could, in principle, provide an export option that outputs a vectorized graphical format.

That could indeed be an option, *if* the font being used is a scalable one. Bitmapped fonts might still exist and being used.

It could even possibly include blinking as an animation!

That again depends on the output picture format, and how it is viewed. If you manage to make the cursor blink on a printed sheet of paper, you probably could make so much money in a short time that you can almost instantly retire. ;-)

:wq! PoC