FYI: I had some time today to look at this issue.
The ‘items’ parameter allows you to specify the number of items to display. One would think that if you didn’t use this parameter, the default would be to display all items.
But, that is not the case. The default number of items displayed is specified by the number of posts per page value that you set up in the Admin, Settings, Reading screen.
So if you want to display more than that number (or even all), then you need to set the ‘items’ parameter as you had discovered. That will force the number of item to display to the value you want.
You can verify this by comparing the number on Admin/Setings/Reading with the query that you can display if you use ‘debug=true’ parameter.
Thanks for using the program. Reviews are always appreciated.