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PrintScreen key - again!


greenep48

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I know this has been discussed in the forums before (see XBMC setup), but I though maybe I could add some new information to everyone's understanding of why this is so difficult.

The ASCII beyboard has been around a very long time, and each technology "revolution" has modified special keys and how they operate. For example, the keyboard on an original Teletype machine has a "BREAK" key that literally broke the circuit connection as a special control command.

The advent of the video display was another one of these revolutions. One problem with implementing a screen capture key is that you don't want the operting system to recognize it as a normal keypress - it is really a direct command to the video processor to capture the display memory.

Therefore, the Print Screen key has no character code as it doesn't produce any character. It has a virtual key code, VK_SNAPSHOT or $2C. As it produces no character no Keypressed event is triggered. If you don't believe this, go see what Showkey reports when you hit PrintScrn - nothin'.

That said, it is a very important key when using XBMC since the support staff almost won't respond to a problem unless you provide a screenshot (and rightly so in most cases!).

No reply is necessary, guys. Just ramblings from an old nerd who grew up with this stuff.

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Printscreen isn't like the modifier keys, Flirc already understands it. If it's not shown in the full keyboard layout on your OS, try programming it from the command line. On a Linux box I use:


flirc record printscreen

On Windows it should work with:

flirc.exe record printscreen

I'm sure there's a way to program from the CLI on OS X too but not finding the location of the flirc command at the moment...

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I have a nasty habit of responding at work and not clicking send. Anyway, what I tried to answer you yesterday was that I don't think that's the issue. I'm pretty sure Macs understand the Printscreen key when you attach a keyboard that has one. I'll confirm this when I get home and can take the flirc off my linux box and attach it to my Mac. The problem is that the flirc GUI doesn't have a way to record the Printscreen key on Mac, ostensibly because Mac keyboards don't come with one, and I don't know how to program flirc from the CLI on Macs.

Then again, I also don't know if greenep48 is using a Mac to begin with. The commands I listed above will work on Windows and Linux, but if he is on a Mac, I don't know what to tell him unless Jason can tell us how to run the equivalent command from a Mac terminal. I'm sure it's possible, but it's not in a default path for commands on my system, nor is it in the Flirc.app folder.

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