5 ms·

I haven't really followed Wayland very closely but as a huge fan of tiling WMs (I've used StumpWM for more than a decade, although I switched to dwm lately) I'v

by simias 8y ago

I haven't really followed Wayland very closely but as a huge fan of tiling WMs (I've used StumpWM for more than a decade, although I switched to dwm lately) I've been a bit worried by the claims that Wayland doesn't have a window manager per se etc... Although I admit that's mainly because I haven't taken the time to understand what Wayland is exactly. Just in order to aleviate my fears, can somebody tell me if in this brave new world it'll still be possible to effectively implement something like DWM or some other tiling WM "within" Wayland? Are there pitfalls I should be aware of? I suppose there's got to be a way to do custom tiling, but I worry that there might be other less obvious limitations. For instance every time I attempted to use custom "window manager" on Windows (to add virtual workspaces for instance) I quickly noticed that it didn't work very well. One problem was that the window management was cooperative instead of preemptive: when the "window manager" attempted to hide a window it'd basically send a message to the application requesting that the window be minimized. If the app was frozen or simply uncooperative it'd remain where it was. Could that happen in Wayland?

gfiorav 8y ago
I wouldn't worry too much. I'm sure tiling functionality can be plugged in (i.e. some special snap app like gnome-snap, or something similar)
PaulHoule 8y ago
Wayland works the way that Windows has since Windows Vista.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  ...is this an endorsement or a downside?
  - PaulHoule 8y ago
    just a fact.
- emersion 8y ago
  Hmm, I don't think you could say that. Wayland restricts a lot more what clients can do.
sgtcodfish 8y ago
At least one tiling Wayland WM already exists, as a drop-in replacement for i3: http://swaywm.org/ http://swaywm.org/ Hopefully your fears are sufficiently alleviated by that! I suspect you've got a mistaken idea about what Wayland actually is and what it does. As for your 3rd paragraph, I'd have to leave that to someone more experienced than I am.
singlow 8y ago
It is not at the wm level. It replaces X. Your favorite tiling wm would need significant rewrite, but there are some tiling wms out for wayland including an i3 clone.
Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
Reading through this source code should tell you that pretty much any user interaction paradigm is possible with Wayland. I am the maintainer of Sway[0], a drop-in replacement for the i3 tiling window manager of X11 fame, and of wlroots[1], the library doing the heavy lifting in this example compositor and which is the basis of several other[2] Wayland compositors, several of which are tiling. [0] http://swaywm.org/ http://swaywm.org/ [1] https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots [2] https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/wiki https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/wiki
- pdkl95 8y ago
  >1 pretty much any user interaction paradigm is possible Is it possible to implement an interaction bound to a global hotkey (e.g. middle click) that takes the current selected text (in any window) and send it to the event target window as keypress events? Without special support from either program? [xselection pasting] Can I monitor and/or intercept (block) input events of any program without special (voluntary) support from the monitored program? Can I send arbitrary synthetic input events? [hotkey macros] Features that require opt-in support from the application don't count (it needs to work on proprietary programs and programs that use any toolkit (not just GTK/Qt). I rely on these features, so I will be sticking with X11 if Wayland isn't compatible.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
    The answer is "it depends on how much work you want to put into making custom protocols for these purposes". >Is it possible to implement an interaction bound to a global hotkey (e.g. middle click) that takes the current selected text (in any window) and send it to the event target window as keypress events? Without special support from either program? [xselection pasting] Yes, doing it the way you described is possible. Or you could just use the existing and moderately-well-supported primary selection protocol: https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/blob/master/protocol/gtk-primary-selection.xml https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/blob/master/protocol/gtk-p... We should try to get that standardized... >Can I monitor and/or intercept (block) input events of any program without special (voluntary) support from the monitored program? Can I send arbitrary synthetic input events? [hotkey macros] Sure, from the compositor. If you want clients to call the shots you need a protocol.

by simias 8y ago

gfiorav 8y ago

I wouldn't worry too much. I'm sure tiling functionality can be plugged in (i.e. some special snap app like gnome-snap, or something similar)

PaulHoule 8y ago

Wayland works the way that Windows has since Windows Vista.

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
...is this an endorsement or a downside?
- PaulHoule 8y ago
  just a fact.
emersion 8y ago
Hmm, I don't think you could say that. Wayland restricts a lot more what clients can do.

sgtcodfish 8y ago

At least one tiling Wayland WM already exists, as a drop-in replacement for i3: http://swaywm.org/ http://swaywm.org/ Hopefully your fears are sufficiently alleviated by that! I suspect you've got a mistaken idea about what Wayland actually is and what it does. As for your 3rd paragraph, I'd have to leave that to someone more experienced than I am.

singlow 8y ago

It is not at the wm level. It replaces X. Your favorite tiling wm would need significant rewrite, but there are some tiling wms out for wayland including an i3 clone.

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago

Reading through this source code should tell you that pretty much any user interaction paradigm is possible with Wayland. I am the maintainer of Sway[0], a drop-in replacement for the i3 tiling window manager of X11 fame, and of wlroots[1], the library doing the heavy lifting in this example compositor and which is the basis of several other[2] Wayland compositors, several of which are tiling. [0] http://swaywm.org/ http://swaywm.org/ [1] https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots [2] https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/wiki https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/wiki

pdkl95 8y ago
>1 pretty much any user interaction paradigm is possible Is it possible to implement an interaction bound to a global hotkey (e.g. middle click) that takes the current selected text (in any window) and send it to the event target window as keypress events? Without special support from either program? [xselection pasting] Can I monitor and/or intercept (block) input events of any program without special (voluntary) support from the monitored program? Can I send arbitrary synthetic input events? [hotkey macros] Features that require opt-in support from the application don't count (it needs to work on proprietary programs and programs that use any toolkit (not just GTK/Qt). I rely on these features, so I will be sticking with X11 if Wayland isn't compatible.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  The answer is "it depends on how much work you want to put into making custom protocols for these purposes". >Is it possible to implement an interaction bound to a global hotkey (e.g. middle click) that takes the current selected text (in any window) and send it to the event target window as keypress events? Without special support from either program? [xselection pasting] Yes, doing it the way you described is possible. Or you could just use the existing and moderately-well-supported primary selection protocol: https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/blob/master/protocol/gtk-primary-selection.xml https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/blob/master/protocol/gtk-p... We should try to get that standardized... >Can I monitor and/or intercept (block) input events of any program without special (voluntary) support from the monitored program? Can I send arbitrary synthetic input events? [hotkey macros] Sure, from the compositor. If you want clients to call the shots you need a protocol.