4 ms·

For me, the quickest way to tell that I'm running on Wayland is seeing if multi-lingual keyboard input is broken. I have right-alt-while-pressed set to switch t

by o11c 2y ago

For me, the quickest way to tell that I'm running on Wayland is seeing if multi-lingual keyboard input is broken. I have right-alt-while-pressed set to switch to a Greek layout (because who doesn't math?), and it reliably works on X11 but breaks in all sorts of weird ways under Wayland (sometimes it simply fails to enable/disable, sometimes it shows a notification as if it changed but switches back when input actually happens, ...). On the bright side I'm finally learning how Vim's digraphs work.

porphyra 2y ago
Multilingual keyboard input is such a mess haha. I need to type a lot of Chinese using pinyin and still haven't found a reasonably polished implementation on Wayland (Sway) that works on both Xwayland and true Wayland applications. So I reverted to i3 with ibus.
- przmk 2y ago
  For what it's worth, the latest 1.10 release of sway introduced support for IME popups. Maybe that would help
pmontra 2y ago
Really? My laptop has my national keyboard but I switch to USA for programming because of {} [] and all the other characters that can be typed with minimal use of extra keys. My fingers know the keys and the switch combination, maybe windows + space. I didn't expect Wayland not to have such basic functionality after so many years. But frames must be perfect, no tearing (is that the word?)
- o11c 2y ago
  It's possible that the "permanently switch to next layout" works reliably, but not the "switch while held" (which I do because I'm selecting single symbols at a time)?
  - dietr1ch 2y ago
    Have you tried using a compose key? I lost my custom mappings when switching from X to Wayland, but they work fine in both. I did lose my custom mappings though, but I only needed them when I was in emacs and obviously there's already a command for inserting weird stuff, so I just added a binding for it.
    - o11c 2y ago
      I use the compose key for compose stuff. It's a huge pain to actually write and install custom compositions so I don't bother anymore, just use the defaults (which is mostly annoying due to missing keypad variants, e.g. ± must be typed using the top of the keyboard). It looks like the default en_US.UTF-8/Compose includes mappings of the form: <dead_greek> <a> : "α" but to use that I'd have to figure out how to map a key to `<dead_greek>`, and keyboard mappings that aren't in the standard checkboxes are such a pain.
      - interroboink 2y ago
        > It's a huge pain to actually write and install custom compositions Could you say more about this? IME, it's just a matter of adding lines to ~/.XCompose — is there something I'm missing?
        dietr1ch 2y ago
        Is ~/.XComposed picked up anymore? At least it wasn't early on, and I just gave up on keeping it around. I guess it's up to each Wayland compositor, which calls for inconsistency :/
        interroboink 2y ago
        My understanding is that generally, Wayland uses XKB, which respects ~/.XCompose But I think there are specific exceptions still, such as this Chromium bug: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40272818 https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40272818
tomxor 2y ago
Both Xorg and Wayland compositors use libinput, so it's probably more to do with lack of decent configuration support in your DE or WM. You can always configure libinput manually. Sway just lets you add libinput configs inline inside your sway config. [edit] This is probably not relevant (assuming correct wayland libinput config), since this is not where mult-lingual input transformations live. libinput just handles the physical keyboard mapping and behaviour. On more careful reading of the parent this sounds more like a buggy input method editor.. or maybe an issue with switching between X and wayland apps.
- mananaysiempre 2y ago
  Is (simple, so e.g. non-CJK) multilingual input a libinput thing? I thought it was a libxkbcommon thing.
  - tomxor 2y ago
    NO! my mistake, I latched onto keyboard input and didn't think about multi-lingual. I'm guessing you mean things like pinyin, I think that's a dbus thing, which is still a thing on wayland but I don't really know anything about this... I'll get my coat.
- immibis 2y ago
  That still boils down to a Wayland design issue, since Wayland requires each individual DE/WM to get support for such features while X only needs them in Xorg.
  - orangeboats 2y ago
    X11 eventually punted the whole thing to each individual application. For input methods like Fcitx or IBus to work reliably on modern X11 programs, you need to set envvars like the following [0]: GTK_IM_MODULE=fcitx QT_IM_MODULE=fcitx SDL_IM_MODULE=fcitx [0]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fcitx5#IM_modules https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fcitx5#IM_modules
  - dahauns 2y ago
sho_hn 2y ago
Hear, hear. KDE just elected improving the Input story in its bi-annual community wide goals election: https://kde.org/goals/ https://kde.org/goals/
jandrese 2y ago
Another way to check if you're running on Wayland is to start some 3D accelerated application and see if the screen is all flickery. Apparently Wayland has some issue with not generating a frame sync that causes all variety of problems, but usually lots of flicker.

by o11c 2y ago

porphyra 2y ago

Multilingual keyboard input is such a mess haha. I need to type a lot of Chinese using pinyin and still haven't found a reasonably polished implementation on Wayland (Sway) that works on both Xwayland and true Wayland applications. So I reverted to i3 with ibus.

przmk 2y ago
For what it's worth, the latest 1.10 release of sway introduced support for IME popups. Maybe that would help

pmontra 2y ago

Really? My laptop has my national keyboard but I switch to USA for programming because of {} [] and all the other characters that can be typed with minimal use of extra keys. My fingers know the keys and the switch combination, maybe windows + space. I didn't expect Wayland not to have such basic functionality after so many years. But frames must be perfect, no tearing (is that the word?)

o11c 2y ago
It's possible that the "permanently switch to next layout" works reliably, but not the "switch while held" (which I do because I'm selecting single symbols at a time)?
- dietr1ch 2y ago
  Have you tried using a compose key? I lost my custom mappings when switching from X to Wayland, but they work fine in both. I did lose my custom mappings though, but I only needed them when I was in emacs and obviously there's already a command for inserting weird stuff, so I just added a binding for it.
  - o11c 2y ago
    I use the compose key for compose stuff. It's a huge pain to actually write and install custom compositions so I don't bother anymore, just use the defaults (which is mostly annoying due to missing keypad variants, e.g. ± must be typed using the top of the keyboard). It looks like the default en_US.UTF-8/Compose includes mappings of the form: <dead_greek> <a> : "α" but to use that I'd have to figure out how to map a key to `<dead_greek>`, and keyboard mappings that aren't in the standard checkboxes are such a pain.
    - interroboink 2y ago
      > It's a huge pain to actually write and install custom compositions Could you say more about this? IME, it's just a matter of adding lines to ~/.XCompose — is there something I'm missing?
      - dietr1ch 2y ago
        Is ~/.XComposed picked up anymore? At least it wasn't early on, and I just gave up on keeping it around. I guess it's up to each Wayland compositor, which calls for inconsistency :/
        interroboink 2y ago
        My understanding is that generally, Wayland uses XKB, which respects ~/.XCompose But I think there are specific exceptions still, such as this Chromium bug: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40272818 https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40272818

tomxor 2y ago

Both Xorg and Wayland compositors use libinput, so it's probably more to do with lack of decent configuration support in your DE or WM. You can always configure libinput manually. Sway just lets you add libinput configs inline inside your sway config. [edit] This is probably not relevant (assuming correct wayland libinput config), since this is not where mult-lingual input transformations live. libinput just handles the physical keyboard mapping and behaviour. On more careful reading of the parent this sounds more like a buggy input method editor.. or maybe an issue with switching between X and wayland apps.

mananaysiempre 2y ago
Is (simple, so e.g. non-CJK) multilingual input a libinput thing? I thought it was a libxkbcommon thing.
- tomxor 2y ago
  NO! my mistake, I latched onto keyboard input and didn't think about multi-lingual. I'm guessing you mean things like pinyin, I think that's a dbus thing, which is still a thing on wayland but I don't really know anything about this... I'll get my coat.
immibis 2y ago
That still boils down to a Wayland design issue, since Wayland requires each individual DE/WM to get support for such features while X only needs them in Xorg.
- orangeboats 2y ago
  X11 eventually punted the whole thing to each individual application. For input methods like Fcitx or IBus to work reliably on modern X11 programs, you need to set envvars like the following [0]: GTK_IM_MODULE=fcitx QT_IM_MODULE=fcitx SDL_IM_MODULE=fcitx [0]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fcitx5#IM_modules https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fcitx5#IM_modules
- dahauns 2y ago

sho_hn 2y ago

Hear, hear. KDE just elected improving the Input story in its bi-annual community wide goals election: https://kde.org/goals/ https://kde.org/goals/

jandrese 2y ago

Another way to check if you're running on Wayland is to start some 3D accelerated application and see if the screen is all flickery. Apparently Wayland has some issue with not generating a frame sync that causes all variety of problems, but usually lots of flicker.