XaSnap - Screenshot-tool for XaAES and N.AES

Download: xasnap.zip (Changelog)

Important: May 21st 2026 the XAAESNAP protocol was removed from XaAES. This means that with XaAES releases after this date you will need to install KbTweaks in order to use XaSnap. XaSnap will continue to support the XAAESNAP protocol for older XaAES releases.

This program is mainly intended as a companion to Lonny Pursell's ImgView, but it works equally well with ImageCopy, zView or other viewers/converters that can read truecolour IMG-files. If you're not using truecolour screenmodes just about any image-viewer will work.

Install

Start xasnap.prg from xaaes.cnf, or let the desktop or Taskbar autostart it. Unless you use an XaAES release from before May 21st 2026 you will also need to install Keyboard Tweaks. XaSnap will automatically register the following keyboard shortcuts with Keyboard Tweaks:

Alt+Help - screenshot of entire screen.
Alt+Shift+Help - screenshot of the top window.
Alt+Shift+S - select area to screenshot.

These will be configurable later.

Use

When you press the hotkey combination that initiates a screenshot of a selectable screen section is pressed, the mouse cursor turns into a crosshair. Move it to the top left corner of the section you want to screenshot and press and hold the left mousebutton. Move the mouse to the lower right corner of the section and release it. Now the XaSnap UI is displayed. When you press the screen/window hotkeys the XaSnap UI is displayed immediately.

View. Asks ImgView (if running) or the desktop/AV-server to display the screenshot. ImgView will then let you save the screenshot in various formats more suited for the modern world.
Save. Let you save the screenshot as an IMG file.
Clipboard. Copies the screenshot to the clipboard, so you can paste it in a document/program/whatever that use the GEM clipboard for images. So you can take a screenshot and paste it directly into e.g. Papyrus.
Cancel. Discards the screenshot.
XIMG. Screenshots in truecolour (16 bit and above) are normally saved in plain IMG format, as there is no palette in these images. However, some programs will complain about "wrong format" if there's no XIMG header, and some will complain if it's there. So if the program you attempt to load the IMG with complains, try flipping this option. Palette-based images (4, 16 and 256 colours) are always saved with an XIMG header.
Reduce colours. A lot of programs does not understand truecolour IMG files, like Papyrus or GEMView. If your screenshot is intended for one of these you can reduce the number of colours to 256/16/mono.
NB! This option is only available when NVDI 5.03 is installed.

The XAAESNAP protocol

Important: May 21st 2026 the XAAESNAP protocol was removed from XaAES. This means that the information below is irrelevant for all XaAES releases after this date.

When the screenshot keyboard shortcut is pressed (Control+Alt+D by default) XaAES will present you with a dialog where you select what to snap - block (selected with the mouse), top window or entire screen. When you've done your choice XaAES will look for an application with the AES process name "XAAESNAP", and send an AES message to this application:

msg[0]: 0x5354
msg[1]: XaAES apid
msg[2]: -
msg[3]: -
msg[4]: x
msg[5]: y
msg[6]: w
msg[7]: h

x and y is the upper left corner of the rectangle to snap, w and h is width and height.

At this point the XaAES dialog is removed from the screen, but the screen is still locked. XAAESNAP now stores a copy of the portion of the screen given by the coordinates in the message. When this is done XAAESNAP sends a reply to XaAES:

msg[0]: 0x5354
msg[1]: XAAESNAP's apid
msg[2]: -
msg[3]: 1 - success. 0 - failure
msg[4]: -
msg[5]: -
msg[6]: -
msg[7]: -

XaAES will now release the screen, and XAAESNAP is free to display it's own GUI (if any).

NB! At the time of writing (Feb. 2025) there seems to be a couple of problems with this XaAES feature.

Window topping/untopping is messed up after calling the screenshot tool.
Sometimes the screen is not properly unlocked, causing problems for XaSnap and sometimes resulting in a complete lock-up of the screen which requires a restart of XaAES.