Mostly I program in c# with mono, but from what I can see, it's impossible to get a screenshot of the desktop with it. I know I can use a external program like xwd but that dumps the screen to the hard drive at inconvenient times. I need to get the screen in memory so I can use it at a later time.

I'm looking for either

1) A way to do this is c#

2) Or a tutorial or something for doing this in a different language.


Thanks for ANY help as I'm really lost at this. It will be appreciated.

Hi -

I don't think you can: I believe .Net is a virtualized environment and, although you certainly have access to the pixels in a .Net bitmap, I doubt there's any direct way to access the pixels in the "real" environment outside of your .Net sandbox.

Yet another reason I'm baffled at folks who genuinely seem to prefer C# over C/C++ (which is far more powerful, incurs far less runtime overhead, and is far easier to program without having to "buy in" to any one IDE or another) or Java (which is "purer" OO than C++, runs everywhere, and - when all is said and done - is virtually indistinguishable from C# in purpose and semantics)(yeah: one has delegates; the other has "main(String[] args)" instead of "Main()" - but REALLY...)

IMHO .. PSM

Great so it is impossible to do it in c#. I do prefer c# over c++, mainly for the slightly simplified syntax. Also, I haven't "bought into" a IDE, I can use whatever I want.

In windows I have seen examples of using the windows api from c#, and getting the screenshot that way. But obviously that isn't going to work from mono.

So I guess I'm going to have to find a way to do this in a different language then.

Thanks anyway.