Wayland 1.22 Released With New Preferred Buffer Scale & Transform Protocol

Wayland 1.22 is now available as the newest feature update to this core set of Wayland protocol and helper code.

The new Wayland 1.22 release adds wl_surface.preferred_buffer_scale as a new event to allow compositors to directly indicate the preferred scale factor for each surface. This allows for better dynamically changing of buffer scales such as for accessibility features, in a VR environment for render surfaces closer to the eye to be at a higher scale, HiDPI screenshots from non-HiDPI screens, and similar possibilities.

Additional new protocol with Wayland 1.22 is wl_surface.preferred_buffer_transform for a similar aim to the new preferred buffer scale event but instead is about communicating buffer transformations.

Also new in Wayland 1.22 is adding a Wayland pointer's axis-relative physical direction to the protocol. The physical direction of the axis motion is added relative to the axis event in order to address bugs like virtual volume sliders moving in the wrong direction with Wayland. Toolkits can now use the scroll direction if wanting to show different visual widgets.

Wayland 1.22 also has a collection of other small fixes and enhancements that have been collected since the prior Wayland release from nine months ago.

The very brief Wayland 1.22 announcement can be read on the Wayland mailing list.