Hey KDE users. While I am not sure whether my question belongs there, I have made a case for this issue to most of the popular DE’s, while I dislike QT, KDE is on the line so let us begin. While the Desktop Zoom is listed under desktop affects, for the sake of this post, I will consider it as an equivalent to a Screen Magnifier since in the event that it is not; firstly the case I will bring up on this post will be void and KDE will be the most accessibility unfriendly DE I have ever seen (maybe tied with XFCE).
I am a low-visioned user who is switching to Linux. I need to use a full-screen magnifier to navigate the computer; however, while most DE’s have implemented a Screen Magnifier at same capacity, ALL of them have the same issue. While I am low-visioned, I want to be able to produce media (screenshots and screen recordings) that can be viewed by people with full-vision. However, when I try to take a screenshot or screen recording with screen magnifier being active, it will only capture the zoomed in portion. This artifact also has the capability to break recording region captures.
I have asked Gnome, Cosmic and Cinnamon for a fix to this problem; however, there has not been much progress. My question for the community is whether this is a bug or a feature request.
zoom which enlarges the whole desktop which you can navigate with your mouse or the keyboard
magnifier which only magnifies an area under the cursor.
when taking screen shots with spectacle it will capture what you have on the screen (at whatever zoom level) but it will not capture the magnified window even with include cursor turned on.
so you should be able enlarge what you are looking at without affecting what spectacle captures by using magnifier effect instead of the zoom effect.
keyboard shortcuts to activate and cancel still work the same.
Thanks for responding, I really appreciate the suggestions. Do you mean that I must use the lens mode or whether I should do window capture? If you mean window capture, you are correct, it will only capture the given window; however, I have some issues with this solution. Firstly, in spectacle, I was not able to find a window capture for screenshot, so the solution would not work for that. Secondly, I usually need to take selection screenshots and I rarely found myself on a situation where I had to take a windowed screenshot. For screen recordings, its fairly inconvenient to record per window basis since I usually want to record multiple apps at the same time.
I’ve wanted to implement this for a while since I also make use of the zoom effect. Magnifier won’t cut it for my level of sight loss.
I would like to be able to take screenshots while zoomed in, and have the user be able to see what it looks like zoomed in. Helps me demonstrate how the zoom effect works. But sometimes I just want to capture my entire desktop without needing to zoom out.
I also would like to be able to do things like livestream myself programming, without the viewer needing to see my zoomed-in (or in some cases, inverted) screen. The movement can make some people feel sick.
Curious if we could allow certain kwin effects to be skipped during screen capture, but only for the captured result. It’s worth noting that Windows allows you to skip the magnifier zoom when capturing the screen as well.
from what you wrote, i took it to mean you want to be able to capture the screen at full size, wile sill being able to navigate around the screen with magnification.
the magnifier lets you do that without getting in the way of your output from spectacle.
i really only tested it using the rectangular region, but i assume it would work the same way with window or screen capture as well.
however i just found that if you set a deleay with rectangular region you can even capture the win effect, if that is what you are after.
What I expect is exactly what @acidiclight , mentioned. While I am not sure whether it must be implemented in kwin side since I am not a regular KDE user, my expectation for is to be able to take screenshots and screen recordings as if I am not using the magnifier, when I zoom in. I wish this to be the case for both lens mode and fullscreen zoom and regardless of whether I capture a window, region or fullscreen.
I am sure that capturing zoom in recording has its place amongst people who records videos; however, I do not believe that such implementation should be considered as a accessibility feature.
The way I’d implement it is to have a “Show accessibility effects” toggle or similar in the “select screen or window to capture” prompts for things that use the portal. For Spectacle it could be an in-app setting. KWin would be responsible for either skipping or not skipping the zoom effect.
Having it be something the user requests will solve that problem. If I wanted to livestream how I use my computer blind, I’d have the choice of including zoom in the capture. But if I just want to capture a screenshot/video while I happen to be zoomed in, I can choose to not include the zoom.
Either way, I’m going to be looking into things on the KWin side for the next little while.
If I have to be honest, the way you suggest feels like the KDE way, I do not have much problem with the implementation as long as I can achieve what I wish (using flameshot and OBS). Thanks so much for looking into it.
the way spectacle currently works on my machine is that it ignores the zoom for all modes except rectangular region.
so no matter my zoom level, if i capture the current window, or the current screen i get exactly what is shown in those windows or screens, regardless of my zoom level.
only if i take a rectangular region while zoomed in does spectacle take the zoom level into account and only captures the region of the zoomed image that i specify, and as pointed out previously, when using the magnifier you only get the non-zoomed area unless you set the delay so it can also capture the magnifier window.
i know there have been some changes to spectacle for plasma 6 but this is how it used to work, and if plasma 6 is not working this way then perhaps it’s a bug.
I have not tried spectacle for a while and I am currently not on KDE so I can neither confirm nor deny the situation with spectacle. However, last time I have tried KDE, I have brought flameshot and OBS since they are my preffered tooling, while flameshot gives the same result as spectacle, rectangular screenshot is the most versatile way of taking screenshot since you can do annotations and I really need/want this form of screenshot. Secondly, on OBS, the full-screen recording will yield with the artifact I discussed earlier, while window recording did not worked at all.
Since Zoom affect is on Accessibility on Plasma 6.5, I believe it is reasonable to expect the magnifier to work with all apps the same way.
I’ve gotten things working as a proof of concept on my own KWin branch. I’m now able to take screenshots and record videos of my full desktop while still being zoomed in. Unfortunately there are problems related to how the zoom effect displays the mouse cursor, so these issues will need to be addressed before I can upstream this work into Plasma.
Hi, just wanted to check whether you have any updates for the screen recording/desktop zoom thing? I have seen the issues with the cursor problem with the magnifier, especially when using “wiggle to enlarge cursor“ or when trying to drag files/folders on dolphin. Should I write a bug report about it or is it something that is actively worked on?
In regards to the portals: Everything is working as a proof of concept on my own branches. It’s however blocked by an issue related to how the zoom effect interacts with the mouse cursor. I’ve been instead working on improved text sharpening in the mean time.
As far as Shake Cursor and the drag/drop thing, it’s an issue I’m personally already aware of but I’d have to check if it’s been reported on Bugzilla already.
