Use of the Windows “Snipping Tool” for capturing screen shots in Alveo. Using Alveo, one can produce images of charts, etc. by right clicking on a chart or Orders window and selecting “Print”. AnAlveo image can either be saved as a file or printed. The Alveo method has disadvantages because one cannot select a portion of an imageto be saved or printed. With black backgrounds often used with Alveo, a great deal of black ink is wasted as you notice when a printed page comes out heavy and wet with ink and, on drying, curls up.
The Windows Snipping Tool app that comes with Windows Vista through Windows-10 allows greater flexibility and is an integral part of the above Windows packages. The Snipping Tool works well within Alveowithout any modification. The Snipping Tool allows one to select a rectangular or free-form portion of an image to be saved or printed (or one can select the entire image as in Alveo). The Snipping Tool also allows one to use a variety of colored pens or highlighters to write on the captured image. As described later, the Snipping Tool which comes with Windows-10 only, has a Delay function that permits the capture of images of Pop-up menus that were previously impossible to obtain with Alveo or other software packages (asdescribedbelow).
For a description of the Windows Snipping Tool, the reader is referred to Wikipedia (see “Snipping Tool”). As indicated above, the app contained in Windows-10 only can capture images of Pop-up menus using a delay feature. The Delay feature allows one to useup to 5 seconds to get ready before the screen greys out in the image selection process. The installation of Snipping Tool apps varies from one version of Windows to the next and so you should goggle “Snipping Tool” and your version of Windows to find the correct method for installation. Installation with Windows-10 is very simple.
In Alveo, I have used the Delay feature to get images of all the Alveoforex pairs presented in the Chart selection pop-up menu called up under File>New Chart. I have used the Snipping Tool to advantage in Alveo by capturing images of portions of charts without having to change from a black background to a white background for charts. (When you print a full chart with Alveo, the paper comes out noticeably heavy and wet with much wasted ink unless you take the extra step of changing the background to white and eventually changing the background back to black). In the case of the “Orders” and“Orders History” windows, one cannot change the background to anything other than black. With the Snipping Tool, you can simply take a rectangular snip of the “Orders” window and only include the data of interest (for example, order number, Forex pair, and pips). In summary, the Snipping Tool is in every Windows package since 2005 and is quite useful in Alveo.