Wayland 1.19 Is Set To Come Soon As First Update In Nearly One Year

[curfew]

That is the forum where the people who create the code for the main desktops talk about what is needed and how to do it in the best way. And AFTER they all decided that, is then when they start coding.

But maybe you think that the best way of doing it is to just let each party implement their own vision, and hope that, magically, all of them end being interoperable.

I was talking about features not being implemented at all, duh. This can mean both delayed implementation but also skipping some stuff altogether due to lack of interest or resources. Third scenario is an existing protocol being extended, but some implementation remaining stuck with the older spec, causing confusion for end-users over why something works sometimes but then just doesn't. (Similar to the DnD mess of today.)

Although right now we can also talk about proprietary protocols as the features required by real DEs such as Gnome and KDE are not there as of today, so both DEs have their own implementations for certain features. Depending on the complexity and rewrites needed, once (IF) these protocols are standardized, it will take a long time for the properietary bits to be replaced with standard stuff.

[rastersoft]

I was talking about features not being implemented at all, duh. This can mean both delayed implementation but also skipping some stuff altogether due to lack of interest or resources. Third scenario is an existing protocol being extended, but some implementation remaining stuck with the older spec, causing confusion for end-users over why something works sometimes but then just doesn't. (Similar to the DnD mess of today.)

Although right now we can also talk about proprietary protocols as the features required by real DEs such as Gnome and KDE are not there as of today, so both DEs have their own implementations for certain features. Depending on the complexity and rewrites needed, once (IF) these protocols are standardized, it will take a long time for the properietary bits to be replaced with standard stuff.

Ok, I see your point. But the question is... How can that be solved? If your solution is to stay with X11, how do you propose to add to it modern capabilities like deep color? More extensions to an already bloated protocol? (check how many entry protocols have X11, for example). Also, remember that a lot of the mess today is due to X11 design being based on "mechanism, not policy", which means that each program (not only each DE, but each program) can implement things like DnD as it preferred.

Wayland is a solution to a real problem. X11 has a lot of design problems that cannot be fixed via extensions, and also has a lot of mandatory functionality that nobody uses today, but that can't be removed. Of course, we are in a transition time, so it is normal that there are still things that aren't as polished as we would want, but also don't forget that you can still use X11, and will can do it for a lot of more years.

And, what is more important, remember that there IS lack of resources, as you already said: there are a lot of people demanding things, but there is very little people doing actual work, coding all these things. This means that they must focus first on the most important and common features, and in this specific case, being able to set non-standard resolutions with a common app is not a common case, so it makes sense to send it to the back of the queue. The day has only 24 hours, and even programmers need 8 for sleeping, and watch a movie sometimes.