[ecf-dev] screen capture and exchange

[Scott Lewis <slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Remy, Chris, Boris, and Mik,

Remy...

I took a look at the screen capture add on to the collab example code, 
and the problem that you (Remy) previously experienced was due to 
limitations on the object serialization for very large objects 
(ImageWrapper when the image data array was very large [i.e. 200Kbytes+, 
etc]). 

I added some basic compression (using zip...which is probably not 
optimal, but does help), and added protocol to send the data as a set of 
messages (see EclipseCollabSharedObject.sendImage) instead of a single 
large message, and it works.  I also did some other mild refactoring in 
line with bug https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=160633.  
Obviously this was just done, so it's not yet in a 
distribution/milestone release.

The reason I'm writing this to Remy, Chris, and Boris, is that I would 
like us to consider adding more/better UI for doing screen capture (and 
display of received screen captures)...and I would like to use this new 
UI to also build in support for sending bits via the ECF datashare API 
as well (so that screen shares can be done directly between people on 
your buddy list as well as within collab session...i.e. via skype, xmpp, 
etc).  I imagine most of you have probably seen this blog posting:  
http://www.jroller.com/eu/entry/capturing_screenshots

Perhaps we could use this as an opportunity to work with the Mylyn folks 
(who already have a screen capture UI as in the posting, but arguably 
should be better/generalized in line with some of their enhancement 
requests), and perhaps the SWT/JFace/Platform UI folks (Boris?), or even 
some of the Jazz folks (Chris?).

Clearly, it would be nice for all involved to have a consistent screen 
capture UI, that then we (ECF) could add the ability to send the 
captured image to buddies, and/or collab group members.  Obviously, this 
is a very common user desire/activity (exchanging screen shots)...which 
is certainly why it's being built into Jazz, Mylyn, ECF, probably 
others, etc., etc.

Scott