Cute trick to snarf Windows dialog box text

I have long been frustrated when trying to report bugs in Windows, because I could not easily snarf the text of a dialog box, etc., to stuff into the bug report.

Well, it turns out there is a way:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/158151/how-can-i-save-a-screenshot-directly-to-a-file-in-windows

PhiLho:

Little known fact: in most standard Windows (XP) dialogs, you can hit Ctrl+C to have a textual copy of the content of the dialog. 

Example: open a file in Notepad, hit space, close the window, hit Ctrl+C on the Confirm Exit dialog, cancel, paste in Notepad the text of the dialog.

Well, I have wasted lots of time not knowing this...

O)f course, I would learn about it after I get into the habit of using tools like SnagIt and Windows 7's Snipping Tool to snip bitmaps by default, and paste those into... email, OneNote.

Heck, yesterday I got a primitive ability to paste images into GNU EMACS "text" files.
      (Basically, I am making such text files be directories, and using my-org-screenshot (found all over, e.g. http://pastebin.com/QfLb9ZBr) to put the screenshot into a file that EMACS' org-mode can reference. Currently using directories, am modifying EMACS' tar mode to allow the new file to be written. Following my dictum that "UNIX already has all of the support needed for structured files: directories. Archives of directories, to make them convenient to move around.")

Heck, I think the biggest change in my usage patterns over the last three years has been to start blithely throwing bitmaps around.  Basically, to treat bitmaps as a first class data type.

Especially useful when you have tools like Microsoft OneNote that can OCR a bitmap.  Abd can therefore do a pretty good job of searching notes composed out of bitmap files.