John's Adventures Forum » Support (John's Background Switcher)
random pictures from more than one picture source
(8 posts) (2 voices)-
Hi John,
I've set-up JBS - in postcard pile mode - on my father pc. Each family member that wants to participate puts his/her pictures in a separate picasa account.
The problem with this set-up is that JBS choose pictures from only one account at a time.
We would like to have roughly the same number of pictures for each account.
To achieve that JBS would need at least an option to select from multiple account at a time.
Then an option to force a minimal percentage and/or number of pictures per picture source would be the most flexible solution - IMHO 8-)What do you think? Any plans in that direction?
Lorenz
PS: I think there was already a discussion on that topic in the forum, but I couldn't find it now.
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If everybody is using Picasa then you can get each person to send you their 'unlisted URL' which they can get from the 'Link to this album' link on their album(s). You can then paste the link into a Picasa set by choosing from 'A private album URL'. The idea is that Picasa lets you send a link to people so that they can view your album even though it's private to everybody else and JBS supports this model itself.
As for forcing percentages for each photo set it is something I've looked at before but is rather tricky to implement and of course I've stuck with complete randomness for now. With each new version of JBS I work on I investigate options like this and will see what I can come up with next time!
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Unfortunately not all accounts are on picasa, there is even a local folder in the mix 8-(
With 'complete randomness' do you mean that JBS should already use pictures from different sources for a mosaic?
As far as I can see that is not the case.Lorenz
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Ah, I see. No, what it does is choose a random, active photo source (eg. Flickr, Folders, etc) each time it switches and then chooses from all picture sets for that given source. So it doesn't choose from all photos across all modes. That's something I'll be looking to change in the next version but as with a lot of things it's trickier than it looks from the outside!
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Couldn't you just separate 'getting new pictures from picture source' and 'selecting picture for pile/mosaic creation'.
IMO you don't need to change the 'get new pictures' part.
I would be content if pictures from all available caches would be use.
For forcing a percentage/number of pictures per source I would create a list of pictures per source/cache, then first pick the requested number of pictures from each list randomly, and after that merge the remainders of the lists together and pick the remaining pictures (the requested percentages need not add up to 100%).
I know the algorithmic part sounds easy, but extending the UI to support it is what will cost the most implementation time (as always 8-)
Lorenz
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Ah if only writing software was as simple as that! ;-)
To give you an idea, internally there's an implementation for every switching source and you ask it for some pictures to choose from. It then goes and looks at its active photo sets and then either retrieves a list from the relevant cache or goes and asks for a new list from the source (like Flickr). It then looks at the settings to figure out what it needs to do, generate a mosaic or whatever so it can work out how many pictures and at what sizes it needs them and gets them from the cache or downloads them. The cache is abstracted away from the switcher so it doesn't have to know about it (this makes the code simpler).
To change it so that you can get pictures from all sources at once involves completely changing the way this process works and believe me that's a lot of work. And that's without even looking at the UI or the problems that can occur mixing photo sets, downloading lots of thumbnails from different locations at once (one of the reasons there's a switcher implementation for each source is that the method of getting photos from each source is completely different so you can't have one way to do everything).
This software development is a complex business to say the least! JBS may seem like a fairly simple application and in many ways it is but at over 30,000 lines of code it's non-trivial to change a core piece of functionality. Like I say, it's something I want to look at doing but it's not as simple as flipping a switch internally unfortunately!
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I see. Nothing is so time consuming and unnerving than refactoring software modules.
Ah well, I will try to convince my siblings to use a common picasa account.
And by the way: if you ever decide to need help with the project (besides the German translation 8-) give me a call.
Lorenz
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Heh heh, I shouldn't complain really, I enjoy working on JBS as a break from team development - I get to be master of my own empire! ;)
And if I decide to open up the development I'll let you know, thanks!
lorenz
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