The Print Screen (or PrtSc) key on the PC’s keyboard once actually printed the text on the screen. Called a screen dump, after you
pressed that Print Screen key, every character on the screen spewed out of the printer, like a snapshot. This feature has been lost since
the PC went graphical in the early 1990s.
Today, the Print Screen key still functions, though it doesn’t deal directly with a printer. When you press the key, a snapshot of the desktop
is taken. The graphical image is stored in the Windows clipboard, and you can paste it into any document that accepts graphics.
The Alt+Print Screen keyboard shortcut works similarly, but takes a snapshot of only the current window.
If you really want to print the screen, you can press the Print Screen key, paste the image into a graphics program, such as Paint, and then
print the image from that program.
Comments
Post a Comment