Snappo stand for SNapshot APPlicatiOn. It is a useful tool to take snapshots of windows, areas of the screen, or the entire desktop in the system clipboard, for quick copy & paste exchanges with other applications. What makes Snappo different is the possibility to apply bar code recognition or OCR on the clipboard snapshot content: if the decoding or OCR will be successful, the clipboard will be set with the decoded or recognized text, leaving you with the possibility to easily paste it elsewhere.
Snappo is written in python using the pygtk library, and relies on gnome to function. The GUI is designed as a frontend to a shell script that leverages a few commands to work its magic.
Linux
Binaries:
tesseract (optical character recognition)
zbarimg (bar codes decoding)
xclip (X Window clipboard for images)
xsel (Insert text into X Window Clipboard)
xdotool (Select a window and give it focus)
eog (Visualize grabbed imaged)
gnome-screenshot (grab the graphic data from the screen)
Python
PyGObject (Python Gtk Object bindings library)
$ sudo dnf install python3-gobject gtk3
$ sudo dnf install tesseract zbar xclip xsel xdotool eog gnome-screenshot
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install python3-gi python3-gi-cairo gir1.2-gtk-3.0
$ sudo apt install tesseract-ocr zbar-tools xclip xsel xdotool eog gnome-screenshot
In case of problems, more information about the installation of the python Gtk Object binding can be found here
MacOS
(Coming soon)
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The usage is pretty straightforward. When started, an icon with a camera will appear in the gnome top menu bar. From this you can show the popup menu with some options:
- Grab Desktop..
Clicling on this the whole desktop (including multiple screens) will be snapshot into the clipboard. - Grab Window..
Running under gnome/x11, this will show a selector with which you can choose a window to snap. Under wayland you need to select the window you want first, then select this menu voice to snap it. - Grab Area..
This option will show a selector with which you can select a rectangular area on the screen to snap into the clipboard. - Set Delay..
This will open a small dialog in which you can put a delay before doing the snapshot. It is useful if you need to arrange the screen before the snap could be taken. - Clipboard.. 🚫 | 🔍
This menu shows a 🚫 symbol when the clipboard is empty, and a 🔍 when it contains a snapshot image. By selecting it the content will be shown in the image viewer. - Copy ⎘
This menu lets you reinsert the snapshot image in the clipboard, in case it was accidentally lost. - Save As.. 💾
(Gnome only) This menu lets you save the snapped content in a chosen file. - Clear ⌫
This menu lets you erase the snapshot image from the clipboard and the persisted temporary file. - OCR
By selecting this, Snappo will perform a barcode detection on the snapped image, decode it and put the resulting text in the clipboard. If the barcode detection is unsuccessful, an optical character recognition will be performed, and the resulting text copied in the clipboard. The barcodes recognized are the ones supported by the zbar package, and the OCR is performed by the open source package tesseract. - About..
Show an About dialog with credits and license. - Quit
Exits from Snappo and cleans up resources.