I gon't understand previous/next in random

[mightyiam]

I set the queue-size to more than the images in the directory like the documentation instructs and I'm sorry I just don't entirely understand what happens when I use previous-wallpaper and next-wallpaper. It's not a big deal because I consider this "nice to have" but wanted to share anyway.

[danyspin97]

Hello @mightyiam ! Ideally, queue-size should be smaller than the amount of images in the directory, otherwise wpaperd will start picking images at random and disregard the queue. This should have been noted in the README, but it's missing, thanks for pointing it out.

The idea is to keep track the last queue-size images that have been shown to avoid repetitions. By default it's 10, so the next random image will always be different than the last 10. In addition, you can iterate the images contained in the queue by using next/prev commands. When you are at the end of the queue, next will give you a new random image.

I hope this explains better how the queue work. Otherwise, I'll be happy to answer any question.

[mightyiam]

Huh. Thank you for the clarification @danyspin97. Just curious; what if the queue size is automatically the number of available images? Does that carry a risk of consuming too much memory?

[mightyiam]

Sorry, I still dont get it. Here is a diagram where the pairs of letters are unique identifiers for images, one pair per screen. I have two screens in this experiment.

repeat prev until reached
     pt zb
next
     ds fb
prev
     pf wb # expected `ds fb`
prev
     pt zb # `ds fb` was skipped?
next
     ds fb # oh, it _is_ here?
next
     sg bb # expected `pf wb`

My queue-size is 20 and I have 60 images in the directory.