The components are: - the compositor, of which there are multiple implementations (gnome, kde, all the wlroots compositors) - the client, which often uses one

The components are: - the compositor, of which there are multiple implementations (gnome, kde, all the wlroots compositors) - the client, which often uses one of several toolkits (gtk, qt, several smaller frameworks, or even directly using the protocol) - the wayland protocol (or rather protocols, because there are several extensions) itself - other specifications and side channels for communication, in particular dbus. Many issues (although I don't think the one in OP) are due to the protocol being underspecified, and so the client and compositor disagree about some semantics, or doesn't even have a standard way to accomplish something across all compositors.