Input and games.

[Pekka Paalanen]

On Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:30:33 -0500
Jason Ekstrand <jason at jlekstrand.net> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 10:25 AM, Todd Showalter
> <todd at electronjump.com>wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 9:26 AM, Pekka Paalanen
> > <ppaalanen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > unfortunately that is not how Wayland works at all. All clients
> > > are isolated from the start, regardless how they are spawned. The
> > > idea might be ok, but concepts and protocol design will be very
> > > different.
> >
> >     I had a feeling that might be the case.
> >
> > > Doesn't really help that I've never used Steam, nor know what Big
> > > Picture is. But I do have a PS3 at home! :-)
> >
> >     "Big Picture Mode" (let's call it BP for the purposes of this
> > description) in Steam is a full-screen program that shows things
> > like your game list, and is basically a glorified game launcher
> > with some ancillary functionality like updating and installing
> > games, and store access.  The important thing for this discussion
> > is that if you are playing a game you launched from BP, pressing
> > the home button backgrounds the game and foregrounds BP.  That is,
> > you return to BP rather than the desktop.
> >
> >     The process is similar to what happens with the home button on
> > the PS3; the game drops to the background, and the OS puts up an
> > overlay. Press the home button again to dismiss the overlay and
> > return to the game.
> >
> >     I'm not going to argue that this is essential behavior; I don't
> > think it is.  It may be desirable in some cases, but it might also
> > be desirable to treat the home button totally separately, maybe
> > have it bring up a gamepad config screen or something if that makes
> > sense. The main place it's desirable is in the case of living room
> > PCs, where people will tend to want to be running things like games
> > and movie players fullscreen, so a standard "get me back to the OS"
> > button is a useful abstraction.
> >
> 
> I think the best way to do it is to simply treat it like an available
> hotkey.  If the user wants to configure the home button to do
> something special at the compositor level they can do so.  This may
> include bringing up the window switcher as pq said, going to desktop,
> going to the media center, etc.  Otherwise, it gets passed to the
> client as a regular button event.
> 
> As far as steam and BigPicture goes, I think they run some sort of an
> overlay anyway so that their in-game chat etc. works.  Whatever they
> use to handle that could also handle the home button.  I'm not sure
> what they'll use to do that in the wayland world.  They may have some
> sort of embedded compositor or just a client-side library that all
> their games include. Whatever way they do it, they can handle the
> home button through that.

Yes, I agree.

Even if BP was not a nesting compositor, making the home button
minimize the active window would usually get you to the BP right under
it. The task switcher would be more reliable, though, and also allow to
get back to the game. It is all mostly a question of making the
Wayland server or the DE controllable with a gamepad.

In summary, I don't think we need to treat the home button specially in
the protocol.


Thanks,
pq