XFDesktop 4.12 wallpaper changer - No imagelist?

Pindakoe · 2015-04-06 08:57:05

Just upgraded from 4.10 to 4.12 and notice that my wallpaper no longer changes. I used a (large) image list which xfce travels through. My impression from the desktop settings app is that 4.12 no longer has the option of an image-list but only displays a single image or cycles through the images in a folder. I am not 100% certain this is correct and digging in xfconf has not made me wiser.
I have a collection of just below 2000 wallpapers, sorted in different directories (by topic/geography etc) and would like to stick to using an image list. Anybody who knows whether an image-lists is still possible? Failing that, is it possible to let xfdesktop recurse through a directory tree instead of just stop at one directory of wall-papers?

Last edited by Pindakoe (2015-04-06 08:58:36)

ToZ · 2015-04-06 12:02:43

Yes, the image list was removed. xfdesktop 4.12 now works on a per-folder basis. You can select the folder you want to cycle through in the Desktop settings applet and select the cycle time via the "Change the background" option.

If you don't want to use the folder-based cycle method, you'll need to create a script to directly manipulate the xfconf database - specifically the last-image property. e.g.

xfconf-query -c xfce4-desktop -p /backdrop/screen0/monitorLVDS1/workspace0/last-image -s /home/toz/Pictures/MyWalls/also-calm.png

Note that the location of the wallpaper in the xfconf database has changed (to accomodate wallpaper per workspace functionality). Your xfconf location may be different than mine. You can use "xfconf-query -c xfce4-desktop -m" to monitor the channel and change the wallpaper using the gui tool to see which property is affected.

Here is a very basic example of a script that you could use:

while true
do 
   PIC=$(cat /home/toz/list.list | shuf -n1)
   xfconf-query -c xfce4-desktop -p /backdrop/screen0/monitorLVDS1/workspace0/last-image -s "$PIC"
   sleep 15m
done

...just make sure that your image list file contains absolute paths to image files. e.g.

/home/toz/Pictures/beams.jpg
/home/toz/Downloads/walls.jpg
...

Sideburns · 2015-04-06 21:25:03

I can't speak for anybody else, but I use rotating images on Xfce 4.10 and would consider the loss of functionality to be a regression. Why hasn't anybody submitted this either as a bug or an RFE?

ToZ · 2015-04-06 23:32:12

Sideburns wrote:

I can't speak for anybody else, but I use rotating images on Xfce 4.10 and would consider the loss of functionality to be a regression. Why hasn't anybody submitted this either as a bug or an RFE?

@sideburns, what do you mean by "rotating images"? Image lists or something like setting one image as a background and overwriting it regularly? If the latter, that functionality has been fixed/enhanced in this commit. xfdesktop now monitors the file for changes and automatically redraws the desktop if the file changes. Note that this commit is only in the git tree and has not yet been officially released.

Sideburns · 2015-04-06 23:37:17

I mean what you're calling "image lists," and is what I have right now in Xfce 4.10. AFAIK, 4.10 doesn't care what folder the images are, or if they're all from the same one. It's a matter of KISS for the user.

ToZ · 2015-04-06 23:48:41

I see. A couple of existing bug reports that are worth the read:
- https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11318
- https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10329

Doesn't look like a decision has yet been made on how to enhance the module to re-introduce the concept of image lists (or something like it).

MountainDewManiac · 2015-04-07 10:28:24

Sideburns wrote:

I mean what you're calling "image lists," and is what I have right now in Xfce 4.10. AFAIK, 4.10 doesn't care what folder the images are, or if they're all from the same one. It's a matter of KISS for the user.

IDK... I would consider the new folder/directory-based way an example of "KISS." Being expected to place all my wallpaper images into a "Wallpaper" folder, that's keeping it simple - I expect the ex-Windows users will pick it right up, lol. And the fact that some of us will have to make copies of the images we want to use so as to not have to move them (the "originals") out of their correct folder(s) is no real hardship, considering the size of current hard drives. Removing the ability for the user to pick any ten (or five, or 20, or 1,279, or...) of those images from a list so that the system will invoke a random change from among that list every n days/hours/minutes is a cosmic-sized bowl of fooey mixed with old gym socks that smells like something other than teen spirit, lol, and would definitely fall under the "stupid" category. But, then again, so did the act removing the ability to adjust the desktop image's relative brightness setting without having to touch the overall brightness setting.

Yep... I found a facet of Xfce that I'm not a fan about. Still... On the balance, it remains my favorite desktop.

Regards,
MDM

Pindakoe · 2015-04-07 19:32:10

Thanks ToZ -- your reply (#2 in this thread) confirmed what I suspected and saves me from a lot of debugging. It looks like I will have to create a new version of my wallpaper script and your scriptlet is good enough base (especially shuf -- I had not picked up on that little gem of a command).

Sideburns · 2015-04-07 19:46:03

MountainDewManiac wrote:

IDK... I would consider the new folder/directory-based way an example of "KISS."
Yep... I found a facet of Xfce that I'm not a fan about. Still... On the balance, it remains my favorite desktop.

Personally, I'd think that having to remember that you need to copy/move those images to the one, special folder (and put no other images into it) is less simple than just selecting whatever images you want, from whatever folders they chance to be in and having them used as wallpaper. I left your last line in because in that, at least, we agree.

This isn't a deal breaker, by any means, but it is (for me) a bit of a mis-feature.

demosthenese · 2015-04-08 00:27:05

Just a thought, but you could create a thunar custom action to create a link to the selected picture files in your background images folder.

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#1 2015-04-06 08:57:05

XFDesktop 4.12 wallpaper changer - No imagelist?

#2 2015-04-06 12:02:43

Re: XFDesktop 4.12 wallpaper changer - No imagelist?

#3 2015-04-06 21:25:03

Re: XFDesktop 4.12 wallpaper changer - No imagelist?

#4 2015-04-06 23:32:12

Re: XFDesktop 4.12 wallpaper changer - No imagelist?

#5 2015-04-06 23:37:17

Re: XFDesktop 4.12 wallpaper changer - No imagelist?

#6 2015-04-06 23:48:41

Re: XFDesktop 4.12 wallpaper changer - No imagelist?

#7 2015-04-07 10:28:24

Re: XFDesktop 4.12 wallpaper changer - No imagelist?

#8 2015-04-07 19:32:10

Re: XFDesktop 4.12 wallpaper changer - No imagelist?

#9 2015-04-07 19:46:03

Re: XFDesktop 4.12 wallpaper changer - No imagelist?

#10 2015-04-08 00:27:05

Re: XFDesktop 4.12 wallpaper changer - No imagelist?

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