Wayland design principles (Re: wayland and gambas)

[Bruce Steers]

On Mon, 29 Apr 2024, 20:53 Thiago Macieira, <thiago at kde.org> wrote:

> On Monday 29 April 2024 10:05:32 GMT-7 Bruce Steers wrote:
> > I guess/hope a similar thing will happen to x11 or Wayland will accept
> this
> > particular issue needs addressing and provide a workaround.
> >
> > As fundamentally Wayland principles are to us, restrictive in a way that
> I
> > think many will simply not tolerate.
>
> Please describe the need you have, not the means by which you think you
> can
> solve the need. For example, why do you think you need to specify absolute
> positioning for certain windows?
>

I personally have written many applications with gambas.

Some have no issue like my text editor for example, a standard looking
editor with window and title bar.

Although gambas provides a Settings.Write(window_name) /
Settings.Read(window_name) that saves/restores the window placement and
size. It's bearable Wayland does not handle this.

Other applications I have made include a customizable LCD clock that runs
at startup and places itself "where I want it"

And a program called Desktop-ish that shows .desktop file folders I can
customize/add and has many features like customizable menus I have added
many many things to that are very useful to me.

This also places itself "where I want it"

My Linux is very personalized and works very well for my needs. (It's
awesome 😎)

The same could probably be said for many gambas coders.

Now Wayland has come along and seems to be...
"you can no longer control window placement, deal with it, why even want
it?, we decided you don't need it"
😕

It is unacceptable for the many who have customized their Linux world with
their own work.

There is worry in our community that Wayland is going to take over and x11
will become obsolete.

And because nobody at Wayland seems to care to provide a means of placement
choice, should you want/need it.

I hope you understand.


> The Wayland philosophy on this has been that the compositor knows best
> where
> to place the windows for regular applications. That does not include fixed
> desktop components, such as the task bar or desktop wallpapers, but those
> need
> to communicate directly with the compositor they are a desktop for.
>

For the most part, sure why not?

For the case detailed above. Most definitely not mine and many others
philosophy.


> Someone may have said they had a need to grab the keyboard and obtain key
> events even when the window wasn't focused. But why is that? X11 uses
> keyboard-grabbing to implement dismissal of popup menus, something that
> Wayland solved properly instead. Another use-case was to ensure that focus
> couldn't be stolen while typing a password... again, Wayland can solve
> that by
> the window describing itself as "I'm recording a password" so the
> compositor
> can implement a higher focus-stealing threshold or other
> attention-grabbing
> techniques (how many of us have typed passwords in the wrong window?).
>
> Other things are done for security: you can't inject events into other
> windows, so we lose the auto-type feature in KeyPassXC. You can't perform
> arbitrary screengrabs any more, but instead screensharing applications
> must
> ask the compositor to let the user choose which window(s) to share.
>
> --
> Thiago Macieira - thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
>    Principal Engineer - Intel DCAI Cloud Engineering
>

Yes I forgot the screen grabs not being available is a downgrade for us.
For example simple colour picker routines many of us have don't work now.
Eg.
PickedColour = Desktop.Screenshot(Mouse.x, Mouse.y).Image[0, 0]

It was that simple.

Mostly Wayland seems okay.
But paranoid it seems as mostly citing "security" for all it's misgivings.
I'm not a govt agency my computer has no nasty secrets I need to hide and
is secure enough for me.

 I hope you understand our dilemma here.

With respects
Bruce Steers
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