Multi monitor support

[utzmobil]

Multiple monitors
Do you plan to support a multiple monitor setup?
It would be a great feature to use for the people with more than one monitor to span the background over all the monitors in use.

[jlu5]

See related bugs on the Launchpad tracker:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/variety/+bug/1132140
https://bugs.launchpad.net/variety/+bug/1160603
https://bugs.launchpad.net/variety/+bug/1096035

The biggest obstacle to multi-monitor support is that it's complicated. We don't yet have the abstraction to deal with multiple wallpapers / setting wallpaper modes, and a proper multi-monitor implementation would certainly require those. If you're interested in span, maybe try the workaround posted at https://bugs.launchpad.net/variety/+bug/1132140/comments/5

[mayank-bizbms]

Is there a way to decide what monitor should the quote be displayed on?

In my current set-up (3 monitors) it's split b/w 2 monitors. I have to adjust quote settings (top\bottom, narrow\wide) to make it sit on the middle monitor.

I would love to see a way I can display the quote on a particular monitor or all the monitors.

[wleoncio]

Regarding OP's request for the ability to "span the background over all the monitors in use", if you're on i3 (or any other of the "simple WMs" listed below) and using nitrogen, the set_wallpaper script is already set to span (see here).

This will not work if you have both nitrogen and feh installed, though. The problem is that the aforementioned line of code is wrapped inside the following statement:

variety/data/scripts/set_wallpaper

Lines 213 to 221 in f7b7a1b

	SIMPLE_WMS=("bspwm" "dwm" "herbstluftwm" "i3" "i3-with-shmlog" "jwm" "openbox" "qtile" "qtile-venv" "xmonad")
	if [[ " ${SIMPLE_WMS[*]} " = *" $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP "* || " ${SIMPLE_WMS[*]} " = *" $XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP "* ||
	" ${SIMPLE_WMS[*]} " = *" $DESKTOP_SESSION "* ]]; then
	if command -v "feh" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
	feh --bg-fill "$WP" 2> /dev/null
	elif command -v "nitrogen" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
	nitrogen --set-zoom-fill --save "$WP" 2> /dev/null
	fi
	fi

Meaning the script will use feh with the bg-fill option, which doesn't span the wallpaper across monitors. I can't think of a clever solution for this, so I just swapped the statements in my installation to use nitrogen first.

@jlu5, I wonder if this warrants a PR. I posit that nitrogen (a popular software among i3 users) should be made the first app to be checked for, with feh being used as fallback. If the user is only using one monitor, nitrogen --set-zoom-fill will not hurt anyway...

[strowi]

Would love to see this.
Another idea would be to iterate over all monitors:

1. change background on monitor1
2. change background on monitor2
3. change background on monitor3
4. change background on monitor1
5. ...

[an4s911]

See related bugs on the Launchpad tracker: https://bugs.launchpad.net/variety/+bug/1132140 https://bugs.launchpad.net/variety/+bug/1160603 https://bugs.launchpad.net/variety/+bug/1096035

The biggest obstacle to multi-monitor support is that it's complicated. We don't yet have the abstraction to deal with multiple wallpapers / setting wallpaper modes, and a proper multi-monitor implementation would certainly require those. If you're interested in span, maybe try the workaround posted at https://bugs.launchpad.net/variety/+bug/1132140/comments/5

Multi monitors works like this with nitrogen:

nitrogen --head=0 --set-scaled wallpaper1.jpg
nitrogen --head=1 --set-scaled wallpaper2.jpg

I hope to see this soon in variety.

[utzmobil]

Thanks a lot for answering,
still a slow work in progress, i suppose. The feature to set multiple monitors with variety is really just a "nice to have", with nitrogen i get no change af wallpapers, though ^^

[wleoncio]

with nitrogen i get no change af wallpapers, though

you can put nitrogen to run through cron to get the auto-switching 😉

[yhilg]

Would love to see this. Another idea would be to iterate over all monitors:

1. change background on monitor1

2. change background on monitor2

3. change background on monitor3

4. change background on monitor1

5. ...

What I would like is for those 3x background changes to happen at their own intervals and source.

For example:
Monitor 1: fetch NASA picture and change every 5 minutes
Monitor 2: use only selected local folder and change every 15 minutes
Monitor 3: use BING, APOD & UNSPLASH and change every 1 hour
etc.

[rcooke]

I was going to add this as a new feature request, but I saw this one already exists. So instead I will mention here that some of the desired functionality is implemented in program hydrapaper: https://gitlab.com/gabmus/HydraPaper

Its written in Python, so we could easily use it for the mechanics of multi-monitor image deployment. Using the existing logic to source images. or whatever....