The Wayland Situation: Facts About X vs. Wayland

[alanc]

X was an odd number too at 15, I can only assume that they are using the extra bit for something other than actual counting.

I thought it was simply because they're using signed integers...?

Yes, the X11 coordinate system simply uses 16-bit signed integers, with 0,0 in the middle. When you move your window off the top or left of the screen it extends into the negative coordinate space, and some X applications have been known to move windows ?offscreen? by simply moving them to very negative coordinates.

[alanc]

From the article:

?But Eric, if X11 is so terrible why not just make X12 rather than a whole new protocol??
They did, technically anyway: http://www.x.org/wiki/Development/X12

We never actually made X12 - that's just a brainstorming list we made as we came across things in X11 that annoyed us, but couldn't be easily fixed in the current X11 protocol while retaining full compatibility. Neither a proposed X12 spec nor any code were ever written by anyone ever involved with X.Org, other than of course, Wayland itself as a complete ground-up redesign.

[Ericg]

From the article:


We never actually made X12 - that's just a brainstorming list we made as we came across things in X11 that annoyed us, but couldn't be easily fixed in the current X11 protocol while retaining full compatibility. Neither a proposed X12 spec nor any code were ever written by anyone ever involved with X.Org, other than of course, Wayland itself as a complete ground-up redesign.

Hence the "Technically" and a link merely to the X12 wishlist. I wasn't trying to imply that there was a git tree of X12.

[MartinN]

From the article:


We never actually made X12 - that's just a brainstorming list we made as we came across things in X11 that annoyed us, but couldn't be easily fixed in the current X11 protocol while retaining full compatibility. Neither a proposed X12 spec nor any code were ever written by anyone ever involved with X.Org, other than of course, Wayland itself as a complete ground-up redesign.

Has it been possible to scrape all the good things about X11 and at least conceptually port them to Wayland or is Wayland's paradigm so different that hardly any of the X11 concepts (or code even) can be reused? Given you've got the X programmers working on this... I'd be scouring the entire X11 codebase just to get this thing out the door asap .

[xnor]

Imho the most important question(s):

How 'ready' is Wayland? Why don't we see it (with xwayland) 'replacing' X already?

And:
How compatible is Wayland with Mir? What do the Wayland devs think about Mir?

[johnc]

Is there any need for XWayland since the toolkits already work w/ Wayland?

[Ericg]

Is there any need for XWayland since the toolkits already work w/ Wayland?

Qt4, GTK2, and other-toolkit apps

[alanc]

Is there any need for XWayland since the toolkits already work w/ Wayland?

Not all of them do - some people still have apps using older toolkits such as Xaw & Motif that they still want to run.

[Vim_User]

I'd be scouring the entire X11 codebase just to get this thing out the door asap .

As I understand it being fast in development is not as important to the Wayland devs as doing it right.

[daniels]

About 5 and 6:
They aren't using a signed number are they? That was the first thing that came to mind (obviously) but I can't see how that would be useful.
Assuming they are using the same addressing scheme as X, it has to be purely axial, otherwise we would've long ago past the 32k pixel max in X.
If it isn't, 2G isn't that much. You can get that now by putting together a wall of 4K tvs (well, 500 of them).

yes, it's axial, hence the separate x and y co-ordinates. it's signed so you can place subsurfaces outside the bounds of the parent, e.g. to do external decorations.