Why do people paste images of textual code and data?

D

drhowarddrfine

I see this so often here and elsewhere. Screen copies of text. Many of these captured images of textual code, errors or data must be edited somewhat on top of that so I presume they had to open an image editor.

Why not just copy/paste the code?
 
Just my opinion, but I think there is a variety of reasons:
  • Lazyness (grab some screenshot-taking program/app and you are done)
  • Unawareness (the user doesn't know where or if such informations are stored as text somewhere)
  • Carelessness/Ignorance (educated users that don't care or uneducated users that probably don't even know the difference between encoding information in different ways that poses advantages/disadvantages)
 
Unable to output text because they have only one display and their system is not responding? And they don't know where the logs are located? I don't know. The above answer from maxnix is most likely.
 
If they don't know where the specific logs are. An acceptable reason is if they can't get into their desktop or bootup, and an error has to do with that, so they have to use their phones or other computer to access the forums. Most other reasons are unacceptable.
 
Many don't know better and are so used to MS and/or Ubuntu that it seems logical. I always think the best thing to do is to nicely explain it. I've seen SirDice do so a number of time.
We all had to learn somewhere.
 
This used to drive me crazy at work. Handful of examples: sending picture of an excel sheet with DNS entries in request to update DNS entries. Or sending a picture of an email in attachment. Sending SKUs and related information you need to look up (p/n, s/n, etc) as a picture.
Some audit companies requires picture as a proof of something being implemented, output from a console is not enough. Because, d'oh, we all know, there's no way to alter a picture.

At some point this drove me so crazy I used to send an reply email, attached a little kitten picture with a text: each time you send text as a picture little kitten as this dies. Of course only within a company, never to customers.

I really don't get it how somebody who is at least a bit technical would do this. Maybe it's a generation thing. My wife's brother who's half my age sent me a picture of a C++ code for me to find a bug. Student @ university. I was like wtf..
 
_martin, we get that at work too. I just try to add something like, please, if possible, and I realize it sometimes is not convenient, send us such things as text, rather than images. It helps us avoid mistakes. A few actually listen.
 
_martin said:
This used to drive me crazy at work. Handful of examples: sending picture of an excel sheet with DNS entries in request to update DNS entries. Or sending a picture of an email in attachment. Sending SKUs and related information you need to look up (p/n, s/n, etc) as a picture.
Some audit companies requires picture as a proof of something being implemented, output from a console is not enough. Because, d'oh, we all know, there's no way to alter a picture.

At some point this drove me so crazy I used to send an reply email, attached a little kitten picture with a text: each time you send text as a picture little kitten as this dies. Of course only within a company, never to customers.

I really don't get it how somebody who is at least a bit technical would do this. Maybe it's a generation thing. My wife's brother who's half my age sent me a picture of a C++ code for me to find a bug. Student @ university. I was like wtf..
Click to expand...

scottro said:
_martin, we get that at work too. I just try to add something like, please, if possible, and I realize it sometimes is not convenient, send us such things as text, rather than images. It helps us avoid mistakes. A few actually listen.
Click to expand...
cartoon131.png
 
scottro said:
_martin, we get that at work too. I just try to add something like, please, if possible, and I realize it sometimes is not convenient, send us such things as text, rather than images. It helps us avoid mistakes. A few actually listen.
Click to expand...
I did that, some did listen. But more often than not I get picture of a text. Maybe less so now as few years ago.

It goes without saying nobody would be angry if somebody sends a picture of a text from console that doesn't have serial console and/or panic message that user was able to capture just before a reboot. We had even a user here send a video from a cell, we were able to help him based on that.

Sending picture of a putty screen and alike is what I personally don't like. Or those examples I mentioned above. And audit pictures. Oh boy do I hate those audit pictures.. :)
 
While I'm whining like a mewling little child, I'll add to pet peeves this one. In Manhattan, the streets are more or less in a grid. Knowing the street number tells you where something is, like 320 E <street> means it's between 2nd and 3rd Avenue. The avenues are trickier. When the web was more intelligent, one could search with something like cross street 400 Park Ave and see the result. Now, it will always take you to google maps, and one has to search the map, usually enlarge it, etc. It's not only not simpler, it makes assumptions about what you want showing a bunch of nearby stores, etc. When all I want to know is how far to walk to get to 400 Park Ave. Give me the cross streets.
 
# pkg install tesseract

Place the image to somewhere in your file system. For example, I dragged & dropped the image from the last message of the thread FreeBSD Screen Shots to the Desktop.

$ cd ~/Desktop
$ tesseract -l eng scr-0805-160604.png test
$ cat test.txt

Exept the initial install, the rest takes a few seconds only. Usually less time than it takes to get your blood pressure high enough for becoming really angry.

Code: 
FreeBSD Screen Shot X-Harks The Pedua]kl
wclook

last pid: 19740; load averages: 0.17, 0.36, 0.36
57 processes: 1 running, 55 sleeping, 1 zombie
0.2% user, 0.0% nice, 0.0% system, 0.0% interrupt, 99.8% idle

915M Active, 649M Inact, 259M Laundry, 796M Wired, 379M Buf, 1309M Free
Swap: 3597M Total, 49M Used, 3548M Free, 1% Inuse

0

tern

utern

[/bin/bash

# set classic root window cursor
#xsetroot -cursor_name X_cursor

setxkbmap -layout "us,lt,ru” -option "grp:alt shift toggle"
#xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

# Enable/disable clock/meters

#METERS=1
# Clock/Meter style
#SMALLMETERS=0 :l
# Background Colour efox
#ROOTCOL="#607080" efox
#ROOTCOL="teal" anx
#ROOTCOL="#696969" mIconMan
#ROOTCOL="deepskyblue4" efox
#ROOTCOL="steelblue4" st
#ROOTCOL="gray50" efox
#ROOTCOL="#0DBDED" efox
#ROOTCOL="DarkGrey" efox
#ROOTCOL="DodgerBlue4" i,;nx
# Background Image, trumps ROOTCOL efox
#ROOTPIC="bluebak.png" ::
# Clock and Load background efox
#BGCOL="gray" :ck
# Clock and Load foreground s-daemon
#FGCOL="black" s-daemon
# xclock width in
#CLOCKWIDTH="120"
#CLOCKWIDTH="119"
#xsetroot -solid "$ROOTCOL"
#1f [ SMETERS = 1 ]; then
# if [ $SMALLMETERS = 1 ]; then &y

# Clock: small ty
# exec xclock -digital -strftime * %H:4H" -face "Terminus:size=17" \ ty
# -bg "$BGCOL" -fg "$FGCOL" -geometry 90x36-7+4 -padding 5 & ty
I press Escape (“[) for menu It;

HETRE =

16:06:05

up 0+02:37:

Xterm

Need to see which daemons are listening for connection requests? Use
“sockstat -41* for IPv4, and "sockstat -1 for IPv4 and IPv6

-- Dru <genesis@istar.ca>
$ cat Documents/screenshots

ogis@freebsd

ogis@freebsd
FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE-p2
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz
2h 37m

544
21011 / 4859M

ogis@freebsd:~ § import /tmp/scr-"date +\um\%d-\SH\HN\%S' .png

L
 
Some people think I mean a camera photo of the screen. I don't mean when someone can't get a system to boot or otherwise. I mean a running system.
Maxnix said:
  • Lazyness (grab some screenshot-taking program/app and you are done)
  • Unawareness (the user doesn't know where or if such informations are stored as text somewhere)
Click to expand...
Having to grab screenshot software doesn't mean laziness. Another word comes to mind when that requires more work than just copy/paste in the terminal.
Being unaware isn't a reason because they took a screenshot of the text so they knew where the information was to take the screenshot.
 
I think Microsoft, and also Apple, create a different "awareness" of the computer than that of the
ones more versed on how it works. It is not only this issue, there are a lot more. For example, people
think they save their files in MS Word, they seem not to have the idea of a common file system.
 
cracauer@ said:
The filesystem isn't mounted. Or readonly.
Click to expand...
Not even /boot? Because if it is mounted, the log could be saved there and then appended to the normal log file during the boot process just after the disks are mounted (and deleted from /boot once is appended to the regular log file).
 
What about OS installer errors? Setting up a serial console over SSH is not that simple. I only have an inkling that sometimes that's a good idea. But even so, I never needed to do that before. So, to start, I'd need to do a few hours of research on how to set it up right - on MY device. Advice that I find that way may be for the wrong device, wrong OS, or plain outdated.

And I have to ask myself if it's worth the effort. Is it for something I use as a daily driver or is it just a time-consuming toy? Is it easier to adjust software settings or to shop around for known compatible hardware?

Also, sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words... If you know what you're looking at, one glance can tell you, "Y'know what, this device is fried, and not recoverable". Or, a 404 error can tell you that your permissions are set wrong... Maybe instead of complaining that users are dumb, we should put in some effort ourselves to figure out what they're saying? ?
 
Text selection with a mouse can't always be done. Some program has to be installed for it to happen. Which program is it? It happens, I've installed enough programs with my basic window manager for it to just work. Even though, I usually have no issues doing this, or find another way to get text, knowing the program would make this more comprehensive. I used to type a few lines or the words of the error out as close as I could get it.

Without that, I can open the file as read-only with a notepad, and copy/paste it that way. Sometimes I can use grep to get the needed error messages. Grep to file, then upload that, then make it into pasting it plainly here. Come to think of it, grepping to clipboard selection would be interesting too.

These screenshots are nifty. Thread graphic-card-identification-and-driver-installation.88407, while it doesn't affect the the issue, because it's a small amount of data, its better to have it pasted as text in the correct form.

scrn-008-png.15829


scrn-010-png.15831
 
sidetone said:
Text selection with a mouse can't always be done. Some program has to be installed for it to happen. Which program is it? It happens, I've installed enough programs with my basic window manager for it to just work. Even though, I usually have no issues doing this, or find another way to get text, knowing the program would make this more comprehensive. I used to type a few lines or the words of the error out as close as I could get it.

Without that, I can open the file as read-only with a notepad, and copy/paste it that way. Sometimes I can use grep to get the needed error messages. Grep to file, then upload that, then make it into pasting it plainly here. Come to think of it, grepping to clipboard selection would be interesting too.

These screenshots are nifty. Thread graphic-card-identification-and-driver-installation.88407, while it doesn't affect the the issue, because ita a small amount of data, its better to have it pasted as text in the correct form.
Click to expand...
dmesg | nc termbin.com 9999 is something I learned from SirDice awhile back... But even then, that's only possible if you have an interactive shell that allows you to capture text output AND send it somewhere. T.T
 
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