GRID LAYOUT
If you choose paginated archives, the bubble weight parameter (1-9) will be used to assign the bubbles to pages. Bubbles with larger numbers will go in pages closer to the favorites.
Until version 7.05 my page assigning algorithm merged smaller clouds if the sum of their cardinality was less than the maximum number of bubbles set for the pages. In the example below you can see that the maximum number of bubbles is set to 12, so pages 9 (5 bubbles) and 8 (7 bubbles) can be merged [9:5+8:7], because together they still fit into the grid of 12 bubbles.
The new option is really the ability to turn off merging, this way different weight values will always produce separate pages. The example below shows when merging is turned off, the first page will only contain 5 bubbles [9:5] even though more could fit into the maximum of 12.
CIRCULAR LAYOUT
In circular layout we should be able to differentiate the center bubble, which may appear much bigger than the rest.
In the updated algorithm if you turn merging off clouds will be formed based on pairs of bubble weight values:
► bubble with odd weight values appear bigger in center
► bubble with even weight values appear smaller around it
In practice:
► 1st page: Weight 9=center. Weight 8=smaller bubbles
► 2nd page: Weight 7=center. Weight 6=smaller bubbles
► 3rd page: Weight 5=center. Weight 4=smaller bubbles
:
SPLITTING PAGES
In either systems if the number of bubbles with a certain weight value (or value pairs) exceeds the maximum number of bubbles set, the algorithm will split the page into two equal weight pages.
If you had assigned the weight value “9” to 14 bubbles while the maximum number of bubbles is set to 12: the algorithm will create two pages each with 7 bubbles: [9:7][9:7]
GALAXY AND CORNER LAYOUTS
These layouts contain variable weight bubbles, so splitting by bubble weight value doesn’t make that much sense. Still, pages will be formed along bubble weight values, but merging cannot be turned off for these.
TL;DR
Turn merging OFF for a much less confusing pagination system.
MORE INFO
VIDEO
The following short video was created for an earlier version of the app, where bubble weights were still called “size” and they had negative values for the archive cloud. But the archive pagination is explained in it in more detail:
