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diff --git a/content/posts/tips-and-tricks-for-taking-screenshots-and-selecting-text-from-images-on-sway/index.md b/content/posts/tips-and-tricks-for-taking-screenshots-and-selecting-text-from-images-on-sway/index.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2145ede --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/tips-and-tricks-for-taking-screenshots-and-selecting-text-from-images-on-sway/index.md @@ -0,0 +1,117 @@ +--- +title: "Tips and Tricks for Taking Screenshots and Selecting Text From Images on Sway" +date: 2021-07-28T18:02:31-04:00 +draft: true +--- + +Several days ago I saw someone rant about how there were no good programs for copy text from an image. +They were using the command line tool [`tesseract`](https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract), but they felt it was too clunky for them. +They were using `tesseract` by taking a screenshot of the text they were trying to copy, saving the screenshot to a file, and running `tesseract` on that file to generate a *new* file with the text that was found. +After all that, they would open the final text file, copy the text, and delete the file. + +This is something that I actually used to do a lot with my Android phone, before they decided to remove the feature for some reason (or at least move it somewhere that I haven't been able to find for years) so I decided to see how easy it would be to hook up [`grim`](https://wayland.emersion.fr/grim/) and [`slurp`](https://wayland.emersion.fr/slurp/) with `tesseract` to copy text from images the same way. + +It turns out, it was not that hard to do: + +``` +grim -g "$(slurp)" - | tesseract - - | wl-copy +``` + +This works by selecting the region using `"$(slurp)"`, and using `grim -g` to take a screenshot of that region. +The file is then "saved" to standard output (that's what the `-` represents here). +`tesseract` is then able to read the image from `-` (standard input, which it gets from the standard output of `grim`), and write the text it finds to - (standard output). +Finally, we stuff the text that was found using `tesseract` into the clipboard using `wl-copy`, and voilà! +We now have the text from some image in our clipboard by just drawing a box around it, and we did it with no temporary files on the disk. + +However, calling this from the command line each time you want to select text from an image could become cumbersome if it's something you want to do frequently. +I decided to set this up using a wofi menu, and several options for taking screenshots. + +Here is the script that I created: + +``` +#!/bin/sh + +screenshot_copy_all_displays="Screenshot all displays to clipboard" +screenshot_all_displays_to_file="Screenshot all displays to file" +screenshot_copy_area="Screenshot area to clipboard" +screenshot_copy_area_ocr="Screenshot area to copy text" +screenshot_area_to_file="Screenshot area to file" +screenshot_copy_window="Screenshot focused window to clipboard" +screenshot_window_to_file="Screenshot focused window to file" +screenshot_copy_monitor="Screenshot focused monitor to clipboard" +screenshot_monitor_to_file="Screenshot focused monitor to file" + +# Store each option in a single string seperated by newlines. +options="$screenshot_copy_all_displays\n" +options+="$screenshot_all_displays_to_file\n" +options+="$screenshot_copy_area\n" +options+="$screenshot_copy_area_ocr\n" +options+="$screenshot_area_to_file\n" +options+="$screenshot_copy_window\n" +options+="$screenshot_window_to_file\n" +options+="$screenshot_copy_monitor\n" +options+="$screenshot_monitor_to_file" + +# Prompt the user with wofi. +choice="$(echo -e "$options" | wofi -d)" + +# Make sure that all pictures are saved in the screenshots folder. +cd ~/Pictures/Screenshots + +case $choice in + $screenshot_copy_all_displays) + grim - | wl-copy + ;; + $screenshot_all_displays_to_file) + grim + ;; + $screenshot_copy_area) + grim -g "$(slurp)" - | wl-copy + ;; + $screenshot_copy_area_ocr) + grim -g "$(slurp)" - | tesseract - - | wl-copy + ;; + $screenshot_area_to_file) + grim -g "$(slurp)" + ;; + $screenshot_copy_window) + grim -g "$(swaymsg -t get_tree | jq -j '.. | select(.type?) | select(.focused).rect | "\(.x),\(.y) \(.width)x\(.height)"')" - | wl-copy + ;; + $screenshot_window_to_file) + grim -g "$(swaymsg -t get_tree | jq -j '.. | select(.type?) | select(.focused).rect | "\(.x),\(.y) \(.width)x\(.height)"')" + ;; + $screenshot_copy_monitor) + grim -o $(swaymsg -t get_outputs | jq -r '.[] | select(.focused) | .name') - | wl-copy + ;; + $screenshot_monitor_to_file) + grim -o $(swaymsg -t get_outputs | jq -r '.[] | select(.focused) | .name') + ;; +esac +``` +*This script does assume that the file ~/Pictures/Screenshots exists.* +*Make sure that folder either exists, or modify the script to save the file in a different folder* + +This script has a bunch of options that I find useful. +You can either choose to save the screenshot to a file, or to the clipboard. +You can choose whether to screenshot a region, the focused window, the focused monitor, or all monitors. +These could of course all be bound to different shortcuts, but I personally like having a single screenshot button for simplicity. + +Speaking of binding shortcuts, lets go over making this script into a shortcut on Sway. +I recommend you save this script to a file in your path. +I personally have this saved to `~/.local/bin/screenshot-menu.sh`. +Remember to mark the script as executable using `chmod +x`. + +Make sure to check that the script works properly for you by running the script from the command line. +In my case, I can open a new terminal and type `screenshot-menu.sh` and the wofi menu will appear. + +If that's working fine, you can now add a binding to your sway config to run the script. +Add a new line to your config (mine is located at `~/.config/sway/config`), for the new binding. +It should look something like: + +``` + bindsym $meh+a exec screenshot-menu.sh +``` + +The `$meh` key is a special modifier on my keyboard; you should use something that makes sense for you. + +Happy screenshotting! 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