I have some « slideshows » for background desktop ready to go.
Those were made with :
⋅ pictures in ~/.local/share/backgrounds/
⋅ the descriptive sequence, durations and transitions in an .xml file in ~/.local/share/backgrounds/contest/
⋅ and the whole description of the set in ~/.local/share/gnome-background-properties/
And they work - on some DE but it seems not in Budgie. I can set them but they won’t show.
I know there is Wallstreet applet but those slideshows require a soft and slow ( blended ) transition and should not prevent from displaying icons on desktop.
Maybe I looked at the wrong place in dconf-editor…
The deprecated gnome wallpaper XML switcher stuff was never implemented in budgie’s background handling routine.
I seem to remember recently gnome devs brought up this matter recently since they wanted to remove this old code. Not sure where that discussion eventually concluded or whether it is ongoing.
So rather than use stuff that is deemed ‘dead’ I would dare to suggest look to using/enhancing current supported solutions.
See, the deprecated thing offered ( and still offers ) that ability
Any other « way » to achieve that in Budgie ?
I guess you’ve guessed the idea behind… pictures for morning, midday, afternoon, sunset, night… only colors shifting - slowly - from a picture to another.
To be honest, unless you are actively watching the desktop all the time (that would be an odd thing todo me thinks!) are you really going to notice the wallpaper transition time?
Of course yes, by chance anytime pictures will transition, it will happen right under user’s sight ( if it’s that short timed transition ). Trust me on that : if you expect people not to see something, that’s exactly the first thing they will notice
Transition has to be smooth, almost …invisible.
Yes it sounds exactly like the link you mentioned, and guess what ? They make use of the deprecated gnome wallpaper XML switcher stuff
In my scenario it’s not countryside with rocky mountain pictures but « branded » wallpapers from organization/business, but same idea.
And it’s exactly the steps I followed with « my » background pictures ( see here in french with screenshots. )
Not perfect though : the slideshow works as expected BUT it’s not offered in gnome-control-center, have to set it through dconf-editor ( see here, question on launchpad, roughly english. )
I don’t know if it’s deprecation but you’re obviously right :
⋅ some bits about dynamic wallpaper / slideshow backgrounds have changed those last years in Gnome, because it used to work this way ;
⋅ deprecated or not, it works and offers different modes of transitions
⋅ and ability to to set a duration for those transitions.
What will it cost to restore the deprecated thing on a Budgie system ( 20.04 and 22.04 ), I bet more than my 2 cents ?
Or any chance budgie-wallpaper-applet might improve on that matter ( duration for transitions ) ?
You could test if turning off window animations also affects the transition speed i.e. sets the transition to zero.
If it does work this way then you could fashion some sort of bash script that switches off window animation, does the wallpaper change, waits for the change to finish and then switch animations back on.
Mmmm… you’d agree it’s not user-friendly. At least not friendlier than the so-called deprecated method.
And I might not explain correctly what I’m looking for :
⋅ I do want a transition between 2 images ( blending, fading, overlaying … don’t know how to name it )
⋅ I want that transition to last long, almost as long as the time interval between 2 images.
⋅ I do not want an instant or sudden switch between 2 images, but very very slow smoothness.
budgie-wallstreet-applet would be enough if it allowed to set a duration for the transition effect.
The deprecated code allowed that, for years so any successor should at least offer the same.
Note my initial comment. The transition is dictated by budgie desktop… so it needs a change there … such as exposing the hard coded transition time to a user controllable value.
Note also « the deprecated code allowed that, for years so any successor should at least offer the same. »
It’s a kind of mistake to hard code something that might / should be changed by user as night / day or dark / light theming become ( not only a trend but ) an expected default feature of any OS.
budgie-wallstreet-applet looks to be the place for such options - if it could override ( disable ? ) the budgie-desktop transition hard coded setting and use its own transition(s).
And timed - with a start-time ( here, a hard coded value won’t bother if it’s known that the slideshow starts at, say, midnight, 00:00:00 )
Also, reading pictures by their name order ( seems always random by my side )
A_01.jpg → A_02.png → A_03.jpg → B.png → C.jpg → D.jpg → E_112.png → E_113.png and so on,
to organize sequence of images.
…but does it mean that value is only one and for all transitions ?
In one given slideshow, some pictures may require slow/long transition while other pictures may require a fast/short transition, or even no transition at all.
Once you have a gsettings value to tweak then any applet including wallstreet can access it. So, for example, wallstreet could be enhanced to point to an xml file, read it, set the wallpaper and the transition value etc.
