1) The spaces in file names had been and are a major problem in most of the native and, or Unix/Non-Unix file-systems, could be a hurdle in sharing, copying and, or moving the screenshot files to other systems. 2) The idea of using colons (:) in file names as also as bad as as is spaces. 3) It is better we use date +%Y%m%dT%H%M%S format for date and time; this will also help us view or list the files in date/time order on almost all systems.
I agree that it might make it hard to share the files, particularly ":" which seems to be unsupported on a lot of platforms. On the other hand, your suggestion makes time stamps totally unreadable and defeat the main purpose of adding the time stamp to the file name. I'm still undecided on this, suggestions welcome. Re spaces in filenames I don't mind removing them but again I find it a pity to make things harder to read for everyone just to support obsolete file systems.
If I'm not wrong programmers had been using date/time in the order I suggested to get access/sort the list of file names in a chronological order .i.e. YYYY-MM-DD_HHmmSS. How about using/adding hyphens (-) and, or underscores (_) e.g. Screenshot_YYYY-MM-DD_HHmmSS.png ?
I would like to add my voice to removing ':' from proposed file names. At least when uploading an attachment to Gmail, the original name is trimmed from Screenshot - 08252012 - 06:12:02 PM.png to the not very helpful 02 PM.png. And I agree with Jérôme that the originally proposed +%Y%m%dT%H%M%S is unreadable. How about the following: Screenshot_%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S ? (Essentially what the OP subsequently suggested.) This looks readable enough to me and allows for proper sorting of files. All in all, more useful. What do you think?
(In reply to comment #3) > I would like to add my voice to removing ':' from proposed file names. At > least when uploading an attachment to Gmail, the original name is trimmed > from Screenshot - 08252012 - 06:12:02 PM.png to the not very helpful 02 > PM.png. > > And I agree with Jérôme that the originally proposed +%Y%m%dT%H%M%S is > unreadable. How about the following: Screenshot_%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S ? > (Essentially what the OP subsequently suggested.) > > This looks readable enough to me and allows for proper sorting of files. All > in all, more useful. What do you think? I think, it's better we make it a configurable option and leave it to the user whatever format she/he likes; for example see the Orage Clock Preferences.
Anything new to this topic? Everytime I want to copy screenshots to my pen drive I get an error message because of those colons. I would totally appreciate the possibility of customizing the filename pattern in general (my personal choice is YYYY-MM-DD__HH-MM-SS). -- Despite: Thank you all for your efforts!
Created attachment 5112 Use file-friendly timestamp The new screenshooter_get_datetime function (added in this patch) would make it easy to create a setting for a custom timestamp. This patch sets the timestamp to "%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S" (YYYY-MM-DD_HHMMSS).
Very very annoying bug. Please fix it for those who don't know how to patch a soft
As an example, scrot (another well-known cmdline screenshooter) uses by default this naming scheme: 2014-12-16-214532_2832x1050_scrot.png So more or less YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS_widthxheight_scrot.png. Fwiw, i support the patch in attachment 5112 , which (in conjunction with timestamp=false in the config file) allows for better naming. And this would also fix bug 10348. I''m not sure we want to make this configurable though (or maybe only as a pref in the config file, only allowing strftime format ?), just better defaults for everyone. Oh, and spaces in filenames should be forbidden too, but that's only my personal opinion :) Jerome, any thoughts ?
*** Bug 10348 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Pushed attachment 5112 hand-merged to git master in ed5f894 Time format currently not configurable and 'hardcoded' to "%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S", apparently that's more or less the consensus. You still get the locale-dependent prefix, so in french i'd get "Capture d'écran_2014-12-20_11-10-12.png" with a space... And this has the nice effect to fix 10348, no more ':' !
Yay! I'm not sure that in some locales having a " ' " as part of the filename is a good idea (e.g. "Capture d'écran_2014-12-20_11-10-12.png"), but let's leave this for a separate bug report. Should we expect a release soon enough?
yes, that's my plan.
A sidenote to the ones who dont like the default localised filename.. if you set the title config key to "foo" and the timestamp config key to "false" in .config/xfce4/xfce4-screenshooter , the default filename will be foo.png.... so the option to control the default filename (and with or without timestamp) is already here.
*** Bug 11820 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***