<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div>> "They have fundamentally different needs than the average application" </div>Well yes, I'm very aware they are, but when you say "DE-component", I see a huge PITA for the developpers who would want to add such features in the desktop. </div>Now, I wouldn't mind some sort of EWMH-like extensions, however, if a developper has to first focus a DE, make a new extension for it, make it accepted in the DE code-base, and then build its app, it's dead from the beginning. </div>So our last hope would be that a DE really exposes a third-party-friendly interface and that others follow... Ubuntu did with their Launcher API, indicators API, etc, and it didn't spread very much. </div> I think if Weston implements an interface it will have a chance though, so I'll still try to push some other ideas on this ML ;-) </div><div class="gmail_extra"> <div class="gmail_quote">2014-07-03 9:03 GMT+02:00 Pekka Paalanen <<a href="mailto:ppaalanen@gmail.com" target="_blank">ppaalanen@gmail.com</a>>: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5">On Wed, 2 Jul 2014 16:16:36 -0700 Jason Gerecke <<a href="mailto:killertofu@gmail.com">killertofu@gmail.com</a>> wrote: > On Wed, Jul 2, 2014 at 3:33 PM, Fabrice Rey <<a href="mailto:fabounet03@gmail.com">fabounet03@gmail.com</a>> wrote: > >> "The question is: what action triggers it to make this ring of icons > >> appear?" > > A global shortkey (and yes I know it's not yet possible on Wayland, that's > > another problem on its own). > > > >> "What's the application doing? Does it have keyboard focus but is > >> potentially not under the mouse pointer? Do you have a screenshot or video > >> of this feature you can share?" > > I'm not the developper of it, I actually don't even use it ^^ I was just > > thinking of it to see how it would fit in Wayland, what's potentially > > missing now in the protocol. > > Here is an article about it: > > <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/gnome-pie-02-released.html" target="_blank">http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/gnome-pie-02-released.html</a> and a video: > > <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFQDyZyMxO4" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFQDyZyMxO4</a>. > > Basically, it appears under the mouse when you trigger the shortkey, and you > > can also use the keyboard to navigate in the items. > > So I see 2 main points here: > > - it places its window not relatively to a parent (which there is not), but > > to the mouse > > - it takes the (keyboard) focus when it appears > > The second point is not related to this topic, so we can probably think of > > it later. > > > > > > > > This reminds me of a something similar[1] that comes with the Wacom > drivers on Windows and Mac. Its not a normal application that you > would open, interact with, (possibly switch away from temporarily), > and close. Rather, the application sits in the background and waits > for some button/mouse/hotkey to be pressed before spawning a window > under the mouse that you interact with for only a moment before > returning to your original task. </div></div>Right, though on a quick glimpse on that video without really understanding what's going on there, the circular menu seems more like belonging to the image processing application. Fabrice's example OTOH is obviously a DE component, as it is a launcher, window control, and stuff. <div class=""> > I do not mean to put words into Pekka's mouth, but I believe what he > means when saying that things like this are "a DE-component" he's > speaking conceptually more than anything else. Alternative menu > systems like this and desklets essentially exist to augment the > desktop itself. Just because they can be written in a DE-agnostic > manner and run on GNOME, KDE, or TWM (all hail xeyes?) doesn't change > that. They have fundamentally different needs than the average > application, and -- at least as far as I understand Wayland -- it > makes sense to leave some of these things up to the desktops to > define. </div>Quite right. Defining a generic protocol (designed from above, a little like the core Wayland protocol has been done) for adding DE components like pagers, task bars, launcher systems, window management thingies, desklets, etc. is so far an explicit non-goal. On Wayland, desktop environments are intended to be much more tightly integrated than on X11. We are not planning to intentionally design support for custom desktop environment arrangements where you pick the window manager from here, pager from there, a 3rd party task bar, and then a few desklets all from different other DEs. Yes, you can say it is a loss for the people who like to build their own DE from various pieces (I'm one of them, but mostly just because I can't bother learning anything else). However, it should be a great win in freedom of design, stability and usablity for the seriously developed DEs used by the masses. Every DE has its own thing for DE components already. Inventing yet another way that doesn't really fit well for any DE and forcing everyone to support that is not a good plan. Some components in some DEs could be not programs but plugins, some may talk via dbus rather than the display protocol, and so on. Instead, we are trying to allow DEs to define their own interfaces for these DE components, and if there actually emerges some common interfaces that could be standardised, then we can look into it. One hope is, that one DE starts to use a public interface for some DE components, some other DE finds it good and starts using it too, and so it slowly becomes a standard. Note, that nothing requires the standard protocol to be part of the display (Wayland) protocol. Unfortunately such organic, cooperative protocol design does not really work for the core protocol that all applications will depend on, and that's why we have and are "centrally" designing the Wayland core protocols and xdg_shell. We cannot really test much without a stable core protocol, and we cannot be sure the core protocol is good until it is put into serious use; we also have already been bitten by this chicken-and-egg problem. Thanks, pq > [1]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McJMnMJydes" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McJMnMJydes</a> > > Jason </blockquote></div> </div>