3 ms·

> Of course, Wayland also has the problem that it's intentionally excluding some useful features that X had, like global hotkeys and screensharing Screenshari

> Of course, Wayland also has the problem that it's intentionally excluding some useful features that X had, like global hotkeys and screensharing Screensharing has been supported for some time already. Some apps support it, some don't. It is up to the apps to use the respective APIs, the times of free reign over framebuffer is over.

mort96 4y ago
I mean, you can get screen sharing to work. But there are like 3 different incompatible "standards" for how to do it. There's no single simple answer to "how to record the screen in Wayland". This has been the state of screen sharing on Wayland for at least 7 years. I'm also very curious about what's envisioned for global hotkeys. Surely we don't expect people to manually go to their system settings and configure some command to run which talks to Discord over an IPC solution to start sharing my voice when I press my push to talk button and stop when I release the push to talk button? But "global hotkeys should be configured on a system basis, not an application basis" seems to be the reigning philosophy, despite being incredibly user and developer hostile.
- vetinari 4y ago
  There is one standard and single simple answer: xdg-desktop-portal with pipewire. Some compositors might have implemented their own private APIs, but that is not a standard by definition. Global shortcuts are a bit more thorny, exactly for the reason you mentioned. You present one POV, the another is, that application-defined shortcuts are incredibly hostile, as they allow application to stomp on each other in the better case, or hijaack global state in the worse one. Some other operating systems do not allow it either, for the same reasons. The long-term solution could be defining api, that allows application to advertise global actions, and allow the user to configure shortcuts that might (or might not) call these, in some user-friendly way.
  - mort96 4y ago
    Isn't xdg-desktop-portal a flatpak thing? It claims to be so here: https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal > A portal frontend service for Flatpak and possibly other desktop containment frameworks. When it comes to global shortcuts, I'm not saying it has a super easy solution, but it's something that it's essential to support. Wayland intentionally doesn't, and I can't see that changing in the short term (as you also agree)
    - vetinari 4y ago
      It is dbus api, and is able to work cross-namespaces (i.e. flatpak containers too). There no harm in using it in non-flatpak apps, at least you will be ready if your app ends up in flatpak. Wrt global shortcuts, I see that there is some work done. The intentional part isn't malice, as in not willing to implement it at all. It is about not implementing temporary solution, that will be quick and dirty, and then being stuck for supporting it for next 50 years.
      - Bjartr 4y ago
        So kind of like Go and generics in that regard
        nine_k 4y ago
        It took Golang 12 years to attain generics. Wayland is already 14 years old. To tell the truth, X11 took roughly 10 years (1986 to 1996) to get to a pretty usable, while pretty imperfect, state, and largely dominate Unix desktops.
- nine_k 4y ago
  I don't see why a there cannot exist a daemon that handles these IPCs in a standard way (e.g. a pipe), and which can be politely asked by apps to map particular hotkeys. An API / UI should be available for the user to review and customize the mapping, and to resolve possible conflicts. This is basically the approach that exists in macOS for many years; I haven't heard a ton of criticisms towards it.
  - vetinari 4y ago
    The issue is being thought about (see https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-specs/-/merge_requests/56 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-specs/-/merge_request...), and then there is a problem with changing the existing habits. As you can see with screen capture, even if the api is available, but it will take years to adopt, with some intentionally dragging their feet -- it is different after all, and the old way worked for me, etc, etc. MacOS ecosystem moves much faster in this regard; mac users expect rapid adoption of new apis, and do not have 20+ years old bash scripts that should continue to work untouched.
ilyt 4y ago
> Screensharing has been supported for some time already. Some apps support it, some don't. It is up to the apps to use the respective APIs, the times of free reign over framebuffer is over. See, that's the problem, it's putting unnecessary load on everything else using it. It should have that API and it should have API that just allows dedicated app to allow/deny permissions to use that API. Not put everything on WM to duplicated more and more code for no good reason and making WM developer harder

mort96 4y ago

I mean, you can get screen sharing to work. But there are like 3 different incompatible "standards" for how to do it. There's no single simple answer to "how to record the screen in Wayland". This has been the state of screen sharing on Wayland for at least 7 years. I'm also very curious about what's envisioned for global hotkeys. Surely we don't expect people to manually go to their system settings and configure some command to run which talks to Discord over an IPC solution to start sharing my voice when I press my push to talk button and stop when I release the push to talk button? But "global hotkeys should be configured on a system basis, not an application basis" seems to be the reigning philosophy, despite being incredibly user and developer hostile.

vetinari 4y ago
There is one standard and single simple answer: xdg-desktop-portal with pipewire. Some compositors might have implemented their own private APIs, but that is not a standard by definition. Global shortcuts are a bit more thorny, exactly for the reason you mentioned. You present one POV, the another is, that application-defined shortcuts are incredibly hostile, as they allow application to stomp on each other in the better case, or hijaack global state in the worse one. Some other operating systems do not allow it either, for the same reasons. The long-term solution could be defining api, that allows application to advertise global actions, and allow the user to configure shortcuts that might (or might not) call these, in some user-friendly way.
- mort96 4y ago
  Isn't xdg-desktop-portal a flatpak thing? It claims to be so here: https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal > A portal frontend service for Flatpak and possibly other desktop containment frameworks. When it comes to global shortcuts, I'm not saying it has a super easy solution, but it's something that it's essential to support. Wayland intentionally doesn't, and I can't see that changing in the short term (as you also agree)
  - vetinari 4y ago
    It is dbus api, and is able to work cross-namespaces (i.e. flatpak containers too). There no harm in using it in non-flatpak apps, at least you will be ready if your app ends up in flatpak. Wrt global shortcuts, I see that there is some work done. The intentional part isn't malice, as in not willing to implement it at all. It is about not implementing temporary solution, that will be quick and dirty, and then being stuck for supporting it for next 50 years.
    - Bjartr 4y ago
      So kind of like Go and generics in that regard
      - nine_k 4y ago
        It took Golang 12 years to attain generics. Wayland is already 14 years old. To tell the truth, X11 took roughly 10 years (1986 to 1996) to get to a pretty usable, while pretty imperfect, state, and largely dominate Unix desktops.
nine_k 4y ago
I don't see why a there cannot exist a daemon that handles these IPCs in a standard way (e.g. a pipe), and which can be politely asked by apps to map particular hotkeys. An API / UI should be available for the user to review and customize the mapping, and to resolve possible conflicts. This is basically the approach that exists in macOS for many years; I haven't heard a ton of criticisms towards it.
- vetinari 4y ago
  The issue is being thought about (see https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-specs/-/merge_requests/56 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-specs/-/merge_request...), and then there is a problem with changing the existing habits. As you can see with screen capture, even if the api is available, but it will take years to adopt, with some intentionally dragging their feet -- it is different after all, and the old way worked for me, etc, etc. MacOS ecosystem moves much faster in this regard; mac users expect rapid adoption of new apis, and do not have 20+ years old bash scripts that should continue to work untouched.

ilyt 4y ago

> Screensharing has been supported for some time already. Some apps support it, some don't. It is up to the apps to use the respective APIs, the times of free reign over framebuffer is over. See, that's the problem, it's putting unnecessary load on everything else using it. It should have that API and it should have API that just allows dedicated app to allow/deny permissions to use that API. Not put everything on WM to duplicated more and more code for no good reason and making WM developer harder