4 ms·

This discussion IMHO shows why it's been so contentious. Wayland started from the secure end without having answers to questions like screen grabbing/sharing or

This discussion IMHO shows why it's been so contentious. Wayland started from the secure end without having answers to questions like screen grabbing/sharing or GIMP eye dropper. They figured there would be solutions down the road. On the other side a bunch of people complained about shortcomings like these, but rather than offer solutions they just wanted to stick with X. IMHO the right answer might be a GUI toolkit (out of process) that has an API for system resources. Permission would be either granted by the user (a file dialog already indicates what files an app should have access to) or set at the application level at install time. The failure to develop solutions like this is why browsers have taken it on by themselves, because they are constantly running untrusted code.

roenxi 3y ago
The right answer is this repository: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols They're figuring out how to extend Wayland to something usable that supports screenshots. Anything that supports plain Wayland is going to be crippled by the protocol limitations, but anything implementing a selection of the extension protocols will be useful. You can see the docs in pretty form here: https://wayland.app/protocols/ https://wayland.app/protocols/ Only took 15 years. Pay special attention to the name of Drew DeVault who has been one of the major heros in the story. The Wayland devs apart from Drew do deserve serious kudos, moving away from X was never going to be easy. But copying pixels into a shared buffer as some sort of challenge is just hard to overlook.
- phkahler 3y ago
  >>They're figuring out how to extend Wayland to something usable that supports screenshots. Anything that supports plain Wayland is going to be crippled by the protocol limitations, but anything implementing a selection of the extension protocols will be useful. Dude please. Wayland has been 100 percent usable FOR ME for years. Plain Wayland is not "crippled" for MY use case. It may be crippled for YOUR use case, and that's a legitimate concern, but don't broad brush Wayland as not usable and crippled in general. For many of us it's already where it needs to be. That said, I do hope those remaining things get sorted out soon.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    Compositors that don't support Wayland protocol extensions are in a tough spot. They are likely on the road to being seen as toy implementations for aforementioned reasons. The de-facto Wayland standard is not going to be the core protocol, in the same way that the core X protocol is woefully insufficient [0] for actually running a modern linux system. It needs extensions. The core protocol just isn't featureful enough - as has been clearly demonstrated by a decade lost in the woods not supporting basic desktop functionality. If a design goal was to delay adoption by 10-15 years while they think about things then I suppose it could be considered a success. Other systems have managed to move much faster than that without doing much harm. The sticking point is that at least the core X protocol didn't need a decade of R&D for a screenshot extension [1]. I suppose people could claim with a straight face that screenshots and streaming are unforeseen use cases, but they would be excellent poker players. It was a design mistake not to explicitly address that up front. An honest one, made by very competent people, but nevertheless a mis-step. [0] https://wiki.gnome.org/GraphicsRequirements https://wiki.gnome.org/GraphicsRequirements [1] I'll admit this is before my time - maybe it did? But the X protocol is a hot mess and Wayland is inching towards the point where it's release is closer to the birth of X windows than the present day.

roenxi 3y ago

The right answer is this repository: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols They're figuring out how to extend Wayland to something usable that supports screenshots. Anything that supports plain Wayland is going to be crippled by the protocol limitations, but anything implementing a selection of the extension protocols will be useful. You can see the docs in pretty form here: https://wayland.app/protocols/ https://wayland.app/protocols/ Only took 15 years. Pay special attention to the name of Drew DeVault who has been one of the major heros in the story. The Wayland devs apart from Drew do deserve serious kudos, moving away from X was never going to be easy. But copying pixels into a shared buffer as some sort of challenge is just hard to overlook.

phkahler 3y ago
>>They're figuring out how to extend Wayland to something usable that supports screenshots. Anything that supports plain Wayland is going to be crippled by the protocol limitations, but anything implementing a selection of the extension protocols will be useful. Dude please. Wayland has been 100 percent usable FOR ME for years. Plain Wayland is not "crippled" for MY use case. It may be crippled for YOUR use case, and that's a legitimate concern, but don't broad brush Wayland as not usable and crippled in general. For many of us it's already where it needs to be. That said, I do hope those remaining things get sorted out soon.
- roenxi 3y ago
  Compositors that don't support Wayland protocol extensions are in a tough spot. They are likely on the road to being seen as toy implementations for aforementioned reasons. The de-facto Wayland standard is not going to be the core protocol, in the same way that the core X protocol is woefully insufficient [0] for actually running a modern linux system. It needs extensions. The core protocol just isn't featureful enough - as has been clearly demonstrated by a decade lost in the woods not supporting basic desktop functionality. If a design goal was to delay adoption by 10-15 years while they think about things then I suppose it could be considered a success. Other systems have managed to move much faster than that without doing much harm. The sticking point is that at least the core X protocol didn't need a decade of R&D for a screenshot extension [1]. I suppose people could claim with a straight face that screenshots and streaming are unforeseen use cases, but they would be excellent poker players. It was a design mistake not to explicitly address that up front. An honest one, made by very competent people, but nevertheless a mis-step. [0] https://wiki.gnome.org/GraphicsRequirements https://wiki.gnome.org/GraphicsRequirements [1] I'll admit this is before my time - maybe it did? But the X protocol is a hot mess and Wayland is inching towards the point where it's release is closer to the birth of X windows than the present day.