Problem with "Custom Application Launcher"

[marie@dk]

I just found scrot, a screenshot commandline tool. I want to be able to run this command by pressing an icon on the panel:

scrot -s '%s.png' -e 'mv $f ~/screenshots/'

This command will let me select a rectangle on the screen and then it saves the screenshot in the ~/screenshots folder and names it with a timestamp (%s).

If I run this command in a shell it works fine
If I run this command with "Run application" in the panel, it works fine

But if I add the command in a "Custom Application Launcher" it works only partially. The file is saved, but it is named s.png ... the %s part of the command is apparently not recognized.

Can anybody tell me why that is?

[Dies]

Place the command in a small script then call the script from a launcher.

[Skunk Worx]

Try using 2 % characters. I think the gnome-launcher gobbles the first % character up.

scrot -s '%%s.png' -e 'mv $f ~/screenshots/'

[marie@dk]

Thank you, Skunk Worx! - I added an extra % and it works :-)

[Skunk Worx]

You're welcome! The gnome-launcher help shows a bunch of '%' escape codes, and I *knew* I had seen this before! Glad to be of help.

[techmum]

Oh serendipity!

I have been looking for an application like scrot for ages.

This is an option that should be built-in to the desktop screen capture, since clearly I am not the only one that mostly wants to capture only part of a screen and not the whole screen. Saves having to capture and then edit the capture to cut out just what you want.

Thanks

[marie@dk]

techmum - I totally agree. It's a crying shame that gnome-screenshot is so limited.

By the way, i found this nice article about scrot:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/...ots_with_scrot

[techmum]

Thanks Marie.

A nice little ImageMagick tip in that article too.