Wallch

Description for Picture Of The Day displayed on desktop

Asked by Julien

Hello,

First I would like to thank you for the great program. It is a very good job.

I am using the option Picture Of The Day. It works very fine. But I am now wondering if there is any way to get the description of the picture (which explains what is on the picture) on the desktop. I notice that the descriptions are in Wallch in the Picture of the day viewer. It is also a little bit frustrating for me :). Is there any easy solution that I can do on my side so that this small description text can be displayed also on my desktop?

Thank you,

With best regards,

Julien

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Alex Solanos (hakermania) said : 		#1

Hello Julien. This indeed is a good idea and we've thought about it before.

As the deadline is very soon (for the inclusion of Wallch 4.0 in 14.04's repos) and we want to make the current features excellent prior to the final release, we don't have much time, but it is a thing in our to-do list. Given enough time, we will make this feature happen :)

Thanks.

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Julien (julien-hunny) said : 		#2

Hello Alex,

Thank you very much for your reply. I will thus be patient :). Until then I will content myself with the viewer.

Regards,

Julien

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Alex Solanos (hakermania) said : 		#3

Julien, please check out how POTD looks for you right now.

I am not sure about how it looks like, but check out 2-3 different POTD images with the text on it:

http://i.imgur.com/g0R6SiK.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/3UwBNjg.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/PVQg5PD.jpg

Should I, in your opinion, append the text on the image, or overlap it, as it is being done now?

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Julien (julien-hunny) said : 		#4

Hello Axel,

wow, that's really magical. What a surprise to see the text appearing on my wallpaper today.

It looks very nice for the picture of the day now on my desktop and on the picture you shared. I just find the font for the picture with the insect a little bit big. I don't know if it is possible that the font size is adjusted so that it looks always the same on the desktop for all pictures of the day (size of the current picture with Boston buildings is very good).

If it should be append to the picture or overlap it, I think it is a little bit a matter of tase. As said I am finding it already very nice how it is now. I am also not sure what you mean by „append“. If it is to add the text bellow the picture and reduce the picture so that the text is not on the picture, I think it is not so nice. The picture of the day is already not always very big (for the vertical one for example) and it would be a pity to have to reduce it more. One idea might be to write the text in a square window/box in one quadrant of the picture (for example bottom left) and that can overlap a little bit the black background. But it becomes complicated and I might still prefer how it looks right now. Maybe some options for the user to set how the text should appear could be developped and added later (?).

But I am already satisified how it is now. That's a great job! Thank you very much.

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Julien (julien-hunny) said : 		#5

I meant "the Houston buildings" (and not Boston) in my previous post.

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Alex Solanos (hakermania) said : 		#6

Hello Julien, thanks for the comments :)

I am trying to make the text look the same in most images, but the thing is that the resolutions are different and it is quite difficult. For now I am trying to fit ~124 characters per line so that image_width/average_char_width is approximately the same per image.

Options for text size is a little difficult to appear because the image is generated from a Raspberry Pi of mine and it would require to generate multiple images, provide multiple links etc etc.

I like the idea of the square box, but I too prefer it as it is for the time being.

So, I will let it as is for now!

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Julien (julien-hunny) said : 		#7

Hello Alex,

the text size looks better now. It is not too big anymore. I think it is ok if it is approximately the same per image.

Yes I understand that option is hard to be done as the text is on the image and several image versions needs then to be saved. To achieve this and also for the idea of square box, the only solution I see is to make a desktop widget for the text. Then it is easier to configure it and the text can go also on the black desktop background. Maybe it can be also useful by the other wallch wallpaper types (other than picture of the day).

But this is just an idea for future improvement. As a fast implementation and for the meantime I think what you did was the best solution. It looks very nice!

Thank you again that you did that so fast!

Revision history for this message
Alex Solanos (hakermania) said : 		#8

Julien, that was just a test. Yesterday I added options into the program that allow you to select the font, the position (top/bottom), the text color and the background color of the description.

This means that we will provide the current picture of the day as is into the PC of the user and then Wallch will take care of drawing the description on it according to the user preferences. This is of course preferable to what is being done now because of the customization options that are available to the user.

As for a desktop widget for containing the text, it is a bad idea, because what if the user himself changes the desktop background? The widget will remain there, which is ugly.