Rendering Images In Sequence, Not Randomly

Asked by jimwg

Greetings!

This is one excellent app! In two minutes I dumped DesktopNova!

Is it possible for Variety to render images in sequence by name or number instead of randomly like the others? Otherwise it's totally perfect for me all the way!

Keep up the great job!

Jim in NYC

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Peter Levi
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Best Peter Levi (peterlevi) said :
#1

Quite a lot of things in Variety are built around randomness, and actually it would be technically quite difficult to impose an order.

This may look trivial, but it is actually easy in just one very special case - when Variety is cycling over a somewhat static flat folder (no subfolders). The general case is that Variety is working over constantly changing directory trees and it doesn't even know how many images are in them. Variety does not try to find, index, or monitor the changes to all the images in the folders - it just randomly picks some images from whatever is available at that moment when it needs them.

"Cycle in order" is even hard to define when downloading is enabled and the folders are constantly changing.

So, even though I may see some valid uses for this, it is not probable it will be implemented soon. Maybe sometime in the future I'll think if it is possible to somehow allow this as an option which works for the local non-downloaded folders. But for now I don't see how this will work well in all possible configurations, and I'd rather not include a half-assed option that only works well in specific configurations.

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jimwg (jimwg) said :
#2

Thanks for your reply! I wrongly assumed Linux allows sequential slideshow wallpaper rendering like Dexpot does in Windows, but it seems that this random render factor is built into Linux and is very hard to get around since no other Linux slideshow wallpaper viewer does sequential viewing so I appreciate your problem! I do look forward to you reconsidering tackling this option in the far future where one can assign images to certain days of the month or seasons such as nature shots and birthdays etc via a sequential stack of images.

Keep up the great work!

Jim in NYC

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jimwg (jimwg) said :
#3

Thanks Peter Levi, that solved my question.

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Peter Levi (peterlevi) said :
#4

It is not a Linux vs Windows thing, it is rather a matter of design of the specific wallpaper changer programs. Variety simply allows a lot of freedom in choosing the image sources (separate images, recursive folders, downloading, etc.) and because of this randomness is much easier to achieve in the general case than sequential display.

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Marcus H. (ssurgul) said :
#5

Would it be any easier to focus more specifically on the 'Folder' add-in for the sequential ordering? Perhaps using an external .conf file for the director(ies) evaluated, and then a simple step through those when Folder is the only element desired?