By now most of you should have noticed that nifty feature that Add/Remove applications and Synaptic got a few months ago – being able to fetch a screenshot for every package, as can be seen in the image below.
What maybe isn’t that well-known is, where do those images actually come from? Easy: they are all at screenshots.debian.net and applications interested in showing them fetch them from there.
Now, I’m not telling you this because I think it’s soooo interesting, but because I’m seeing lots of packages without screenshots and… you can help create those! So, go look for some of your favourite application missing a screenshot, take a meaningful screenshot of it (in English, using PNG format, etc.) and head over to screenshots.debian.net to upload it :).
The new software centre (which can be tested in Karmic) of course also shows those screenshots, and in a much nicer way (they fade in automatically).
Related posts:
- Confession
My dear Ubuntu, I think the time has come that I make a confession. You...
No way to upload screenshot for non-free packages ? (such as Urban Terror)
@sebsauvage:
No, as that could infringe the license of those packages.
I agree this should be looked at in the long run, for example having someone review their licenses on a case by case basis, but I can understand that this isn’t done at the moment as it means lots of boring work just for a screenshot :). Maybe the solution could come as a X-Screenshots-Allowed field in the new debian/copyright format (http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep5/).
How are Debian vs. Ubuntu versions distinguished ?
@Fabian:
I’m not really familiar with this stuff (haven’t checked the code nor anything, so I may be proved wrong) but from what I’ve seen Ubuntu just uses Debian’s screenshots (there doesn’t seem to be any version handling in place at all).
I think it would be best if Ubuntu setup a separate screenshots site for Ubuntu since Ubuntu contains lots of packages not in Debian, has window manager themes not in Debian, has very different branding and patches GUI stuff a fair bit. In short, I think screenshots.debian.net should be considered Debian-specific and only accept screenshots from packages and package versions in Debian.
Hi, I’m the creator of screenshots.debian.net. Very nice to see the blog post here. It’s true that many screenshots have been uploaded already and many are missing. In the next days I’ll improve the view of packages that don’t have screenshots yet because the list is too long. Who cares for screenshots of debug packages for example.
Regarding the non-free packages: I asked on the debian-devel mailing list and was recommended not accept packages for non-free packages to avoid legal problems. Apparently it’s safe to claim that the screenshots are published under the terms of the respective software. But that may be a problem with non-free applications.
Regarding Ubuntu. I could imagine two different approaches – one being slight better than the other. :) Either Ubuntu creates its own screenshots web site (after all the source code for the website is open-source and can be fetched from debshots.workaround.org). But that would create a lot of redundancy. I’d rather prefer to use screenshots.debian.net for Ubuntu, too. Perhaps use a different branding depending on how the web site is queried (screenshots.ubuntu.com or whatever).
Requests from the Ubuntu staff welcome.
@Christoph:
Thanks for your comment, and for giving us the possibility to see nice screenshots!
About the non-free packages, maybe a field in debian/copyright could be used to indicate that it’s safe to upload a screenshot. But I guess this would be overkill for now :).
Anyway, I’ve told Michael Vogt about your comment so that he is aware of this possibility. Personally I believe your second proposal would be great (but I guess the possibility for every version of a package to have a different screenshot needs to be implemented first, unless that’s already possible)!
What could also be nice in the long run is making it possible to upload several different screenshots for a package, so that the users could see more aspects of the applications.
@RainCT:
I should have talked to Michael before. After all we worked together on having him implement screenshots in Synaptic. :) Let’s see what he thinks.
Not sure about your last sentence. Multiple screenshots per package have been supported for a long time. E.g. http://screenshots.debian.net/package/ace-of-penguins
@Christoph:
Oh, right. So it’s just the applications who don’t expose this functionality?
@RainCT:
Probably. The simple API that I offer to make people get screenshots just transmits a single screenshot. That’s the easiest way to just embed it using IMG-SRC tags. On screenshots.debian.net itself all screenshots are shown. If there is need to improve the API then I’m open to suggestions.