Gräßlin: Client Side Window Decorations and Wayland [LWN.net]

Gräßlin: Client Side Window Decorations and Wayland

Posted Feb 15, 2013 21:45 UTC (Fri) by Serge (guest, #84957)
Parent article: Gräßlin: Client Side Window Decorations and Wayland

As for why wayland was initially CSD-oriented, I guess, it's because this is easier for compositor. Server side decorations would require a lot of additional work: make a way to change title, configure supported buttons, borderless popups, window resizability... oh, let's just push those things to toolkit and let them worry about that. More work for toolkit, less work for compositor. Compositor authors should obviously want to make their work easier. :)

I wonder how wayland is going to allow sane tiling with client side decoration. IMHO, it's either good tiling support or CSD.

(Log in to post comments)

Gräßlin: Client Side Window Decorations and Wayland

Posted Feb 17, 2013 15:17 UTC (Sun) by renox (subscriber, #23785) [Link]

> As for why wayland was initially CSD-oriented

Initially? The Wayland dev are still for CSD.

> I wonder how wayland is going to allow sane tiling with client side decoration. IMHO, it's either good tiling support or CSD.

I'm not sure that they care much about tiling, but what is exactly the issue with CSD and "good tiling"?
If the compositor can tell the clients "don't draw your decorations" or "draw your decorations", wouldn't this be enough for "good tiling" and CSD?

Gräßlin: Client Side Window Decorations and Wayland

Posted Feb 17, 2013 23:18 UTC (Sun) by Serge (guest, #84957) [Link]

> Initially? The Wayland dev are still for CSD.

IIRC, implementation of wayland in kwin used server-side decorations from the very beginning.

> what is exactly the issue with CSD and "good tiling"? If the compositor can tell the clients "don't draw your decorations" or "draw your decorations", wouldn't this be enough for "good tiling" and CSD?

Yes, that would be the beginning. But wayland compositor can't do even that. It also does not know about window titles. For the same reason it's kind of impossible to implement a taskbar/dockbar in wayland (no information about window title, icon, etc).

Gräßlin: Client Side Window Decorations and Wayland

Posted Feb 18, 2013 10:01 UTC (Mon) by renox (subscriber, #23785) [Link]

>> Initially? The Wayland dev are still for CSD.
> IIRC, implementation of wayland in kwin used server-side decorations from the very beginning.

Sure but KWin isn't made by Wayland developers, it use Wayland which is different, Weston made in the Wayland project is still CSD only: the Wayland protocol supports both type of design.

> But wayland compositor can't do even that.

Weston cannot do it currently which isn't a big issue: the main issue is that if this 'decoration negotiation' part isn't part of the basic protocol (I don't know if it is or not: I haven't checked) then this will make interoperability complicated.