greenep48 Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris! Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 I'm intrigued, apparently you can make flirc send the print screen button but it's not very use accessible: I'm sure someone more technologically app (cue Jason/Digitalb0y or someone else) can tell use what to do with: #define HID_print_scr 70 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenep48 Posted September 2, 2012 Author Report Share Posted September 2, 2012 Yeah - that link kinda went over my head. Hopefully PrintScrn it will show up on the keyboard in a future GUI update so we can stop having so much fun with this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digitalb0y Posted September 3, 2012 Report Share Posted September 3, 2012 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... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris! Posted September 3, 2012 Report Share Posted September 3, 2012 Would it be because print screen on Mac would be shift+apple key+3? Or maybe it isn't as Flirc is platform independent. Not sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digitalb0y Posted September 5, 2012 Report Share Posted September 5, 2012 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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