Gnome-Screenshot & Beryl Screenshot Plugin

Taking screenshots in the Gnome desktop environment is as simple as pressing [Print Screen] key. If like me you use a Mac Mini USB keyboard (which doesn’t have such a key) you could mess around with keyboard mapping.

Alternatively within Gnome there is a screenshot app called “gnome-screenshot” found in Application > Accessories > Take Screenshot. I’ve placed a copy of this app on the lower panel (the camera icon) and assigned a 10 second delay to the launch properties. This gives me time to prepare for taking screenshots, especially useful for taking a shot of the 3D cube within Beryl.

If you use the XGL/Beryl environment there is a neat screenshot plugin which allows you to take a screenshot of a specific area through the combination of pressing the [Super] key & left clicking your mouse whilst high-lighting the area. You may need to edit the plugin properties within the Beryl Setting Manager to set your desired directory path such as /home/username/Desktop.

Here is an example of the selected area (minus mouse cursor) I choose to take a screenshot of within the Beryl environment.

After releasing the [Super] key and mouse button the screenshot of the area you selected should now be automatically saved in the directory you assigned.

HAL9000 Desktop

Here’s a series of screenshots I’ve taken in sequence of how I recreated a recursive like effect on the cube faces of my current XGL & Beryl desktop. The process is quite simple;

1. take a screenshot of your desktop with your preferred background image.
2. apply this image to the top & bottom faces of the cube.
3. rotate the cube to desired position, and take another screenshot.
4. goto 2 and repeat.

The original image I started off with is that of the character Dave Bowman inside the central core of the HAL9000 computer, from the sci-fi classic “2001: A Space Odyssey”.