Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Tim Golden]

On 28/01/2018 15:04, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for trivial
> pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead of copying
> the code.
> 
> Where has this meme come from? It seems to be one which inconveniences
> *everyone* involved:
> 
> - for the sender, instead of a simple copy and paste, they have to take a
> screen shot, possibly trim the image to remove any bits of the screen
> they don't want to show, attach it to their email or upload it to an
> image hosting site;

At least for Windows users, grabbing a partial screenshot (eg of text) 
has been very easy since Windows 7 when the "Snipping Tool" was added to 
the builtins. Certainly easier for the average user than trying to do a 
slightly tricky rectangle selection within the Windows console.

Likewise, including it in an email isn't hard; there's a command to do 
it right there from within that tool.

And some at least of the disadvantages you cite for the receiver are 
rarely known or well understood by the senders. They regularly send and 
receive emails with embedded images; why should the mailing list they 
use be any different?

FWIW I agree with you; and I even see this at work in different forms: 
someone sends a screenshot of a spreadsheet to illustrate a problem 
rather than the sheet itself. (When there's no especial sensitivity 
which might otherwise be a good reason).

But most people don't interact with text-only forums these days, so it's 
only natural that the don't consider that aspect of things.

TJG