Wayland's Weston Received New Features Yesterday

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Wayland's Weston Received New Features Yesterday

The Weston reference compositor to Wayland received a few more features yesterday in mainline Git...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTUyMDI

[uid313]

Awesome to see alt-tab window switching.
Expose is nice too!

A problem with Wayland is that it has no mouse acceleration so the mouse pointer moves really slow and is a pain in the ass to use.
Also sucks that you cant minimize windows in Weston.

I would really like to see window grid placement. Press WinKey+4 to place window on left side of screen, press WinKey+6 to move window to right side of screen.
WinKey+9 for upper-right corner, etc.

[gufide]

Awesome to see alt-tab window switching.
Expose is nice too!

A problem with Wayland is that it has no mouse acceleration so the mouse pointer moves really slow and is a pain in the ass to use.
Also sucks that you cant minimize windows in Weston.

I would really like to see window grid placement. Press WinKey+4 to place window on left side of screen, press WinKey+6 to move window to right side of screen.
WinKey+9 for upper-right corner, etc.

That will not be useful since it's not meant to be used in production environnement. These feature will be implemented by gnome or Kwin when they will be ready. Weston is just a live example of how to implement a wayland compositor. Nothing more. Don't expect it to be a usable DE. It will not. There's no minimizing because there is not universal way to do it thus it don't belong in a reference compositor.

[giucam]

Awesome to see alt-tab window switching.

Actually it was altready working. The new thing is that it shows windows tumbnails.

A problem with Wayland is that it has no mouse acceleration so the mouse pointer moves really slow and is a pain in the ass to use.

That's Weston's problem, not Wayland's.

Weston is just a live example of how to implement a wayland compositor. Nothing more. Don't expect it to be a usable DE. It will not.

The shell in weston is a toy, but the compositor and backends are very solid and meant to be used in production.

There's no minimizing because there is not universal way to do it thus it don't belong in a reference compositor.

I don't know where this thing that minimization does not need to be in the protocol and it's all in compositors' hands came from. It's plain wrong. There is the need of a protocol to let a client request the compositor to minimize it, just like there is one to maximize or make a client fullscreen. That is being worked on, so we'll hopefully see it soon, and when that will happen we will also see it working in Weston.

[uid313]

Compositor indenpendent of window manager?

Can Wayland have a compositor independent of the window manager?

Or will all window managers also have to be compositors?

I hope Fluxbox, Openbox, Blackbox, wmii, awesome, ratpoison, dwm, i3, etc gets ported to Wayland.

[giucam]

If you don't want to write a compositor your best bet is to write a shell plugin for Weston, which is what i guess those wm will do if they get ported to Wayland.

[uid313]

If you don't want to write a compositor your best bet is to write a shell plugin for Weston, which is what i guess those wm will do if they get ported to Wayland.

Who should write a compositor?
Who should write a shell plugin for Weston?

When should someone decide to write a compositor, and when should someone decide to write a shell plugin for Weston?

What decides which route to go?

[giucam]

When should someone decide to write a compositor, and when should someone decide to write a shell plugin for Weston?

Writing a compositor is a lot of work, writing a shell plugin much less. You also get for free Weston's features like the rdp or rpi backends. By writing a full compositor in house you have more control on it though, and you don't have to follow the changes made in Weston internal API.

[gufide]

Actually it was altready working. The new thing is that it shows windows tumbnails.


That's Weston's problem, not Wayland's.


The shell in weston is a toy, but the compositor and backends are very solid and meant to be used in production.


I don't know where this thing that minimization does not need to be in the protocol and it's all in compositors' hands came from. It's plain wrong. There is the need of a protocol to let a client request the compositor to minimize it, just like there is one to maximize or make a client fullscreen. That is being worked on, so we'll hopefully see it soon, and when that will happen we will also see it working in Weston.

There is no minimization in weston, not wayland. The protocal is there but everything is handled by the compositor. What if minimization is the window becoming a small thumbnail in my bottom panel in my compositor? Or with if you want a fancy animation while minimizing? If everything is handled by wayland (not weston) then all these thing would be impossible and we will just bypass it to get what we want, just like in X

[giucam]

No, the protocol is not there. Wayland clients need a protocol to ask the compositor to minimize them when the user clicks on the minimize button in the window decoration. Then the compositor will aknoweledge that and effectively minimize it, with fancy animations or whatnot.