Add a timestamp to the screenshot underneath the screenshot in the margin

[richardeigenmann]

Description of requested feature:

Add the option - perhaps as a plugin - to record the current timestamp inside the screenshot image. Suggestion is to add a bit of black margin underneath the screenshot and add the date and time in white there. (Of course we can go all in an make the colors choosable as well as the date format but for a version one to test the popularity black and white with a Month in text format will be absolutely fine.)

Reasons for adding feature:

In the past I have done tests of systems where the test evidence had to be kept for regulatory reasons. Often the evidence was a screenshot of a system showing some particular state or the output of having run a command on the console. Having the timestamp embedded and clearly visible in the screenshot adds an extra level of credibility to the evidence.

Extra information, such as Shutter version, operating system and ideas for how to implement:

All versions.

[Photon89]

You could use the Polaroid plugin for this. If you set the rotation to 0, it looks less like a Polaroid though there is still a slight distortion. If you want to get rid of the distortion altogether, you might try to remove the following line:

shutter/share/shutter/resources/system/plugins/perl/sppolaroid/sppolaroid

Line 378 in 2ad1dc6

-polaroid => $angle_sbutton->get_value,

[richardeigenmann]

Thanks, that seems to work. Yes there is a bit of distortion. I suppose if I dig in and modify the plugin that can be fixed.

Is there a way to chain the running of plugin(s) to the taking of the screenshot (so that there is no ambiguity as to when exactly the screenshot was taken. (Example: documenting a series of steps for an Audit, you would not want to show the approval timestamp before the entry timestamp.)

[Photon89]

Do you mean, you'd like to run the plugin twice to have to captions to a single screenshot? If so, which date+time should be used: the one from capturing the screenshot or the one from applying the plugin?

[richardeigenmann]

Let's say you are documenting how to do a Google search and need to keep the evidence in a Word document as part of an Acceptance Test which forms part of a contractual software delivery. You would take a screenshot of how to open the browser, how to type in the URL of Google, type the search term etc. To provide an accurate audit trail it would be helpful if each screenshot had the bar at the bottom of the image with the capture timestamp. I would not want to take the screenshot, click around to run a plugin and then move on to the next step. The images might need to be redacted before being put in a wordprocessor document or a presentation (arrows, highlighting a specific area, removing confidential client names etc.); an activity that might be done in a second phase after the main screenshotable action has taken place. If you have a lot of similar looking screenshots, the capture timestamp would also help figure out the correct sequence when pasting the images,

[DarthGandalf]

The filename contains timestamp if configured to do so; in theory some plugin during editing could take the timestamp from filename and put it into picture

[richardeigenmann]

Of course you could do that.

But the idea of the enhancement request is that the capture timestamp is added below the screenshot automatically when you take the screenshot. We already have this functionality in the Polaroid plug-in. To fulfil the enhancement request we need to figure out how to run the plug-in with a rotation of 0 (and preferably without distortion) as part of the capture process.

It might be desirable to make this generic like defining a series of plugins with option values to run right after a screenshot, thereby automating a workflow. Perhaps such a plug in-chain could be stored in a type of script? Perhaps such a plug-in chain could be a plug-in in it's own right and we might have a single plug-in defined in the preferences as "Plug-In to run after capturing the screenshot"?

[Photon89]

Unfortunately, not possible so far: #18.