Hello,

Firstly this is probably not really Slackware specific but I'm using a pretty much default Slackware 10 install (plusa few bits 'n' Bobs) hence me asking the question here.

Anyway over the last couple of years I've built up quite a large collection of digicam images (actually only about 800 so technically not that large a collection !) These photos are arranged in a series of directories with each directory being named after the date on which the photo was taken.

Now all I'd like is to find a slide show program on my Linux box which can do the same as my home built Visual Basic code on my Windows box. i.e. I'd like something that performs the following functions:

1 Add all images in a directory of my choosing to a playlist, optionally it should also recursively add all images in all underlying directories at the same time.

2 Sort the playlist either on image name only or source directory and image name.

3 Start a slideshow using the generated playlist and change the image after a user configurable length of time.

4 This slideshow must support three modes, forwards, backwards and random and should either finish after all images have been displayed or continue until I manually stop it.

So having had a good look round my Slackware box I've found gThumb and Kuickshow but neither of them perform all these functions. gThumb is especially frustrating as it even has catalogs but you can't recursively add images from a selected folder to a catalog (or am I missing something obvious ?)

So if anyone can recommend anything I'd be most interested ? as it seems such a trivially simple thing to want to do....

No idea if it fullfills all your wishes, but have you tried imgSeek? imgseek.sourceforge.net

It would be a cool program to code, if I've some time i'll give it a shot

You should be able to code it using a shell script and something like xv or kuickshow.

Cheers for the replies.

Firstly I've not seen imgSeek so I'll have a look at it shortly (I'm about to go out but will look later this evening)

And it would indeed be a good thing to code ! In fact the best thing would be to get the "build a playlist by searching from this directory plus all sub directories" function added to qThumb and Kuickshow as both do most of the other stuff well already. I've already raised a bugzilla request for gThumb and will do the same for Kuickshow.

But the idea of simply coding it is my favourite option but sadly highlights my main problem with Linux in that I can code quite well but just not on the Linux platform - I've actually got 15 years plus commercial coding experience but this is mainly on Fujitsu (ex ICL) mainframes running Virtual Machine Environment (VME).

However I do know how to write my own sort routines, hash tables, lists using blocks of memory (plus secondary array of pointers) plus how to go walking about round the stack, into memory, etc. etc. so I entend to start learning soon.

But if you do write anything that does the job I'd be most interested in seeing it !

Thanks again.

GQView will do most of what you require, but I don't think it will
play slideshows backwards. Worth a look, though. I'm pleased with it.

another forward only slideshow kde's kuickshow
you can manually go backwards by pressing the pageup key
http://docs.kde.org/en/3.3/kdegraphics/kuickshow/

gthumb is a nice program. It's also included with slack's install.

I was looking around freshmeat news and found this one: http://imgv.sourceforge.net/
seems to do all you want (except randomness i think)

Thanks again for the heads up on GQView and ImgV. I'll certainly be having a look at both in the week.

But having thought about it I think the best solution to this is for me to find out the format used for the gThumb catalogs and, assuming it's doable, to then write a shell script to get file names and write these out as a catalog in gThumb catalog format.

In preparation I've already learnt how to read the arguments from a shell script, check whether the first argument is a directory and if so launch a recursive find piping the output into a text file. So even if it's not the best way of doing things I'm learning as I go along.

So cheers again for all the top tips - and if I do get anything useful written I'll update the thread with the details (hey at least the more experienced will probably be able to have a good laugh at my beginners shell script )