LFCS 2012: X and Wayland [LWN.net]

LFCS 2012: X and Wayland

Posted Apr 16, 2012 17:11 UTC (Mon) by Fats (subscriber, #14882)
In reply to: LFCS 2012: X and Wayland by dgm
Parent article: LFCS 2012: X and Wayland

> No, that's window management. Decoration is just drawing borders around the window rectangle. in Wayland you still have a window manager, it's the compositor. The compositor does move windows around, hide or display them. It can do other things like distort them or map them to the sides of a spinning cube.

I don't understand it. How does the compositor know that it has to move or minimize a window if the client is responsible for the window drag bar and the minimization widgets ?

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LFCS 2012: X and Wayland

Posted Apr 17, 2012 8:07 UTC (Tue) by renox (subscriber, #23785) [Link]

>If a window doesn't respond to messages

And to a specific "ping message" I think as it should be possible for a window to ignore some events.

> then the compositor can draw overlay on it with largish "Minimize" and "Force Close" buttons.

"Force Close" OK but I'm not so sure about minimizing/hiding: I thought that this part was handled by the clients.

LFCS 2012: X and Wayland

Posted Apr 17, 2012 8:21 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

>And to a specific "ping message" I think as it should be possible for a window to ignore some events.
Yup. Patches to add 'ping event' and shading of inactive windows have just been posted today: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MT...

>"Force Close" OK but I'm not so sure about minimizing/hiding: I thought that this part was handled by the clients.

Compositor can hide/minimize windows forcibly (and restore them back if unresponsive application recovers). I.e. it might look like:
1) A window grays out.
2) "Force Close" and "Hide" buttons appear
3) You press "Hide" button and window disappears.
4) An icon in the system notification area appears notifying you that there are unresponsive applications. You can right-click on it and bring up a list of forcibly closed apps, with possibility to unhide or kill them.
5) If application recovers, then the user can be notified by flashing icon on the notification area.

Something like this.

LFCS 2012: X and Wayland

Posted Apr 17, 2012 17:21 UTC (Tue) by Fats (subscriber, #14882) [Link]

> Easy. Add an 'override mode' to the compositor.

So is this in the Wayland architecture ?

LFCS 2012: X and Wayland

Posted Apr 17, 2012 18:14 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

It's not yet implemented (the very basic 'fading of inactive clients' was pushed yesterday) but it's certainly within the Wayland architecture and perfectly doable.

LFCS 2012: X and Wayland

Posted Apr 17, 2012 19:07 UTC (Tue) by Fats (subscriber, #14882) [Link]

OK, now still add per-client network transparancy (not per-desktop) optionally with NX-style reconnectability and then I may consider Wayland as an option.

LFCS 2012: X and Wayland

Posted Apr 17, 2012 19:16 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

It's certainly possible. As I understand, something like xpra for Wayland is in the works.