the background panel doesn't let you add xml wallpapers

[Francisco Castillo]

Description: Ubuntu oneiric (development branch)
Release: 11.10
gnome-control-center 3.2.0-0ubuntu5
wishlist?
the appearance menu shows a xml wallpaper, called "contest" , but you can't add a custom one from the "plus" button, it only shows images

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

I've sent the bug to https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=661547

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

upstream said it's not a bug

"That's on purpose. "XML" backgrounds are usually provided by distributions (and
other customisers of the software). You can still test those by adding them to
~/.local/share/gnome-background-properties/."

[Francisco Castillo (panchokoster)]

mmm no it doesn't work adding a xml background to that folder doesn't make it visible on the control center, adding it to /usr/share/backgrounds doesn't work either, the only way i've found was replacing /usr/share/backgrounds/contest/background-1.xml with my custom xml file.
adding them in gnome 2 was just drag and drop.

[Pykler (hnassrat)]

This cannot be by design, why are you messing with user who use this feature! This cannot be invalid!

[Pykler (hnassrat)]

And who is upstream, do you have a link to that?!

[Pykler (hnassrat)]

OK found the link, sorry for the frustration... However, this is an ubuntu bug, since the xml's under

/usr/share/gnome-background-properties

Namely

/usr/share/gnome-background-properties/cosmos.xml
/usr/share/gnome-background-properties/ubuntu-wallpapers.xml

Are not even in the list :) only the weird contest one is in the control center in oneiric

[Pykler (hnassrat)]

OK figured out what the upstream comment meant :S or :) in any case too much work

~/.local/share/gnome-background-properties/

cat >~/.local/share/gnome-background-properties/custom-wallpapers.xml <<EOF
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE wallpapers SYSTEM "gnome-wp-list.dtd">
<wallpapers>
  <wallpaper deleted="false">
    <name>Pykler</name>
    <filename>/home/pykler/.backgrounds/realtime/background.xml</filename>
    <options>zoom</options>
  </wallpaper>
 </wallpapers>
EOF

Replace the path and name as needed, launch the Appearance in the gnome-control-center and you will see the new "Pykler" background.

Again too much work.

I think the following command should do it, but couldn't get it to refresh properly:

gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename --type string file:///home/pykler/.backgrounds/realtime/background.xml

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

> gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename

nautilus has been ported to gsettings in GNOME3 and stopped using gconf so no wonder that doesn't trigger any update

[Jose Luis De la Cruz (joseluis-delacruz)]

While Ubuntu development team is working in this issue, you can set your custom slideshow in ubuntu 11.10 as follow.

Create a custom slideshow with crebs (http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/25549/how-to-create-a-wallpaper-slideshow-in-ubuntu/)

After creating it. Crebs store it as a xml file in your $HOME/.crebs

Then rename & replace crebs xml file to background.xml in the path /usr/share/backsgounds/contest

[Gregor Riepl (onitake)]

The corresponding gsettings comand line would be:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri 'file:///home/user/Pictures/wallpaper.xml'

But you should be very careful what you put in that XML file. Relative paths aren't supported, for example. If one of the images can't be found, Unity will crash and can only be resurrected by resetting the above to something invalid or a valid picture.

While I'd like to have user configurable animated background like you all, I can see that the feature is not quite ready for general consumption yet. Yes, this is a feature request. :)

[vince (vince06fr)]

This bug must be valid because this features is one of the answer of the [url=https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1]bug n° 1[/url]