Variety

Option to only show new images

Asked by Sparhawk

Firstly, great program! Really slick, and does what it says perfectly!

I just wanted to know if there was a way to only show new images, or to download a new image if all previous images had been already shown. It would be great to have this available in two areas. Firstly, as a preference for the automatic change that occurs every x hours. Secondly, as an option to trigger it manually, similar to the "next" menu option.

Cheers!

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Peter Levi
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Peter Levi (peterlevi) said : 		#1

Variety keeps no database of what has been shown and what not, and I don't plan on adding one for now. However, newly downloaded images are automatically appended to the front of the queue, so normally if you have downloads enabled, and the interval is short enough (e.g. shorter than the auto-change interval), you would see newly downloaded images mainly (no matter if automatically shown or if you pressed Next).

Additionally, in the newest committed revision there is a feature to visualize all recent downloads as thumbs, and you can click them there to use them (how to run trunk version: https://answers.launchpad.net/variety/+faq/2094).

There is no option to download a new image on demand. One of the reasons for this is the same as the one the download interval is minimum 30 seconds - I don't want Variety's users to put way too much load on the wallpaper sites, as this may result in bans.

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Sparhawk (sparhawkthesecond) said : 		#2

Thanks for the quick response. And it all makes sense. So do I understand correctly that there are two separate parts to this program? The first part downloads images to a folder, and the second part selects from this pool? And they don't communicate with each other? So even if I download a new image every hour, and change the wallpaper every two hours, then there's no way to favour newly-downloaded images? It's all just random?

Cheers.

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Best Peter Levi (peterlevi) said : 		#3

You are correct that there are two fairly separate parts, but they are not completely separate and they do communicate to each other. As I said "newly downloaded images are automatically appended to the front of the queue", i.e. they are given priority immediately after they are downloaded. So they are added to the front of the images-to-show-next queue (but only if they match the "Color and size" requirements) and you will see them soon after the download, but are afterwards no more considered special - in the future you won't be seeing them more often than the others.

Just give it a try. Uncheck all options in "Color and size" so that all images are considered "good", then set the intervals to 30 seconds download and 1 minute change and see how you will be looking at almost exclusively newly downloaded images.

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Sparhawk (sparhawkthesecond) said : 		#4

Thanks for the answer.