What happened to the Wallch albums?

We have worked really hard on Wallch 4.0
New features, bug fixes, integration with other operating systems, make the app user friendly and a lot more!
(You can see the full changelog here -> http://melloristudio.com/wallch/#wallch4 )

To make the app user friendly we had to change the user interface and also remove features that was hard for someone to understand. Wallch albums was one of these features that got removed.

For now
You can simply copy the images you want to a certain folder and choose these folder

For Wallch 5 we have in our mind to put some customization when selecting images. I am finishing my school exams in one month, then me and Alex will try to update the ppa on possible bug fixes and requested features.

I will update you when it's done, cheers ;)

> To make the app user friendly we had to change the user interface and also remove features that was hard
> for someone to understand. Wallch albums was one of these features that got removed.

This was not in the change log, which was why I asked.

> You can simply copy the images you want to a certain folder and choose these folder

This doesn't quite solve my problem: Under Wallch 3, my albums looked like:

Album 1 = Folder 1
Album 2 = Folder 2 + Folder 1
Album 3 = Folder 3 + Folder 2 + Folder 1

Each of the folders is pretty large (over 1>GB, thousands of images) so simply copying them doesn't fix the problem.

I suppose I can try using simlinks to recreate that structure, but it is kind of kludgy. That is why albums (or better yet folder sets) would be what I want.

Good luck with your exams.

I tried the work around, and it doesn't work. In particular, I created a directory that contained a simlink to folder 1 and folder 2, and then selected it in wallch. It returned no pictures. If wallch followed simlinks when building directories I could work around the problem, but for now I can't get it to behave the way I want.

Hello, finished my exams with success!

I will start Wallch with your request.
So what i will do:

1. Make symlinks (shortcuts) , that have a folder as a target link, work
2. Add an option for startup, for the "Wallpapers" feature, to choose randomly between the selected pictures locations.

Something else? :)

Hello!

Congratulations on your successful completion if exams. One more feature if you could add is wallpaper from "Custom URL", like numerous people are using "National Geographic Photo of the day" from "http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/"

This will be an A+ as currently people with Linux desktops are using a script to rotate wall paper from NatGeo.

And second A+ will be for option to save the "Photo of the day" to a designated folder.

Thanks for your time and efforts, which will be a great benefit to you in future.

Regards,

:)

> 1. Make symlinks (shortcuts) , that have a folder as a target link, work

At the user level, the requirement I'm trying to satisfy is to create albums that contain other albums. This would work, but there might be a more straightforward way to do this.

Also, when following symlinks, don't forget to check for circular references (not sure to what extent this is done by the OS and to what extent it needs to be done in code). The circular failure mode is particularly nasty.

> 2. Add an option for startup, for the "Wallpapers" feature, to choose randomly between the selected pictures locations.

This is not a feature that I would use, although some may like it. Making it an option is a good choice.

While you are there, currently on startup wallch changes once and then quits. I need to manually start it from the terminal to get the usual timed changing pattern. I think that bug was reported elsewhere, but you are likely to stumble across it while testing the randomly switch albums on start feature.

O god so busy, haven't touched my laptop 1 week now. Sorry

@Mohammad Hasnain
please make a new question and elaborate there cause for example the link that you gave me is a link to a page not a link to an image. But don't worry we will add "National Geographic Photo of the day", because we got a lot of requests for it

@Russell Almond
> At the user level, the requirement I'm trying to satisfy is to create albums that contain other albums. This would work, but there might be a more straightforward way to do this.

Please don't use the word "albums" cause it doesn't exist anymore. I don't get what you say here.

> While you are there, currently on startup wallch changes once and then quits. I need to manually start it from the terminal to get the usual timed changing pattern. I think that bug was reported elsewhere, but you are likely to stumble across it while testing the randomly switch albums on start feature.

At startup, wallch will start the feature that was running before shuting down computer, So in order to start chaning pictures on start up, you must have started the "Wallpapers" feature before shutting down computer. There is also a feature to change only once per system startup at the Preferences dialog.

@Russell Almond
>> At the user level, the requirement I'm trying to satisfy is to create albums that contain other albums. This would work, but there might be a more straightforward way to do this.

@Leon Vitanos
> Please don't use the word "albums" cause it doesn't exist anymore. I don't get what you say here.

I'm not sure I can say this without using a new (or maybe old) word as I'm really asking for the return of a feature that was in Version 3, but I can't recreate in Version 4. In my mind an "album" is a set of pictures that I would like wallch to cycle through (or choose randomly from). Right now, the album concept in wallch is mapped to physical directories, what I'm asking for is some kind of "virtual directory" which can contain several other directories.

Let me try a second example. Suppose my Pictures directory contains three subdirectories: Landscapes, Flowers & Wildlife. Now suppose I want wallch to choose randomly between the pictures in the Flowers and Wildlife folders, leaving out the landscapes. The only way to do that in the current version is to create a FlowersAndWildlife folder in my pictures folder and move Flowers and Wildlife there. But then I couldn't create FlowersAndLandscapes without duplicating pictures.

I'm trying to give you the user level requirements without being perscriptive about implementation because I don't have time to look at the source code. Two possible solutions come to mind:
a) [better] Allow me to create an "album" within wallch by selecting multiple directories in the Wallpapers tab somehow.
b) [worse] Make sure that wallch follows symlinks when finding where the pictures are. That way the "FlowersAndWildlife" directory could contain two simlinks to the Flowers and Wildlife folders. [This solution is weaker because it requires more sophistication on the part of the user to implement.]
These are meant to be suggestive, not mutally exclusive operations.

@Russell Almond
>> While you are there, currently on startup wallch changes once and then quits. I need to manually start it from the terminal to get the usual timed changing pattern. I think that bug was reported elsewhere, but you are likely to stumble across it while testing the randomly switch albums on start feature.

@Leon Vitanos
>At startup, wallch will start the feature that was running before shuting down computer, So in order to start chaning pictures on start up, you must have started the "Wallpapers" feature before shutting down computer. There is also a feature to change only once per system startup at the Preferences dialog.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the controls. I have the Wallpapers function selected and set to cycleon 3 min intervals. I have both the Start Wallch on System startup option checked, and the suboption, "If the feature ..." checked as well.

The behavior on startup is to select one picture from the last selected album(directory) and then exit. Where I was expecting it to continue the 3 minute cycle. Would unchecking the second box produce the desired behavior? (If so, the wording on the option is a bit confusing, but a better one does not spring to mind.)

Thanks.

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.

Hello, i finished my job 1 week ago.

Now i have a lot of time to work on Wallch and other projects.
So what i made work:
Symlinks
A folder manager as you requested.

I am waiting my co-developer to fix something and he updates our ppa.
After that tell us if you want something else, we will not be late this time ;)

Waiting ppa to get updated, and i change it to solved

☐ PPa not updated
☑ PPA updated
☐ World is over
☐ Found out why the chicken crossed the road

To install the PPA run these commands one by one in a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wallch/wallch-4.0
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wallch

The chicken crossed the road to get to the other side and the world is not over because symbolic links and folder manager have been added to Wallch.

☑ Found out why the chicken crossed the road

Thanks!

I've had a chance to test the new feature now (although it took a while for me to find it in the preferences).

If I create a folder set with two folders or a directory with two simlinks, it seems to work as expected.

If I try creating a folder set with more than two folders, or a directory hierarchicy with more than 2 simlinks (there may have been some nesting there, I have not tested this without nesting), two weird behaviors emerge:
1) The start button remains greyed out.
2) The picture count is lower than I would expect.

So progress but, not complete.

Hey Russell! Thanks a lot for bug testing it!

I cannot reproduce your issues at all, to tell the truth.

I added 3 folders to a set. Each folder with 1 picture and 3 symlinks in them.

Each of the symlinks point to another folder with 1 picture in it. So we have a total of 12 folders.

Picture for clarity: http://i.imgur.com/2klOOcY.png

1/sym1 links to sym1.1
1/sym2 links to sym1.2
3/sym1 links to sym3.1 etc

The folder set contains the folders named 1, 2 and 3.

The result in wallch: http://i.imgur.com/YJhrNXP.png

So, I used MORE than 2 folders in a set, each containing MORE than 2 symlinks.

Maybe I misunderstood the nesting thing you said? Can you post a step by step guide on how to reproduce the bug?