Embeding wingets like xembed GtkPlug / GtkSocket

[Jannis Pohlmann]

On Tue, 7 Feb 2012 21:19:07 +0100, Peter de Ridder <peter at xfce.org> wrote:

> In Xfce we use the xembed protocol trough GtkPlug / GtkSocket. We
> wonder if something similar would be possible with Wayland as well. If
> it isn't possible yet would such a protocol be feasible.
> We got some (wild) ideas which could give similar results to xembed
> and wonder whether these are realistic.

In case you wonder what we use GtkSocket/GtkPlug for, it's panel plugins
and settings widgets, which we moved into their own processes for several
reasons, including increased stability (buggy plugins running in a 
separate process cannot crash xfce4-panel) and flexibility (settings
dialogs running as a separate application can either be opened as 
standalone dialogs or be embedded into xfce4-settings-manager (our
equivalent to gnome-control-center).

We could easily live without the flexibility in the settings manager,
but panel plugins really matter to us. Also, I generally like the idea
of being able to embed widgets from one application to be embedded 
into another as this allows to reuse visual components in a relatively
simple way.

As Peter, I am interested in hearing how you as the Wayland developers
feel about this. Can you shed some light on this?

  - Jannis