Rewriting ancient code

Posted Feb 13, 2023 13:08 UTC (Mon) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
In reply to: Rewriting ancient code by Vipketsh
Parent article: The future of Thunderbird

Wayland isn't a rewrite of X, any more than Android SurfaceFlinger or MacOS Quartz is a rewrite of X. It is a completely different way of doing things.

Rewriting ancient code

Posted Feb 13, 2023 13:45 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (11 responses)

It's true that Wayland is not a rewrite of X, but it is intended to replace X. As such, it needs to do a bunch of things that X currently does (though it does them in quite a different way.)

Rewriting ancient code

Posted Feb 13, 2023 14:49 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (10 responses)

Wayland is, in spirit at least, X13. It can't claim to be X12, something else has claimed that.

Cheers,
Wol

Rewriting ancient code

Posted Feb 23, 2023 13:34 UTC (Thu) by mrugiero (guest, #153040) [Link] (9 responses)

I always love your historical knowledge. With something else claiming X12 you mean the one next version of X that never materialized, or was there another project that took the name?

Rewriting ancient code

Posted Feb 23, 2023 16:03 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (8 responses)

Yes I meant the version that never materialised.

Can't remember where I got the information from, but I was discussing X, Wayland, and network transparency iirc, probably here on LWN! Probably from someone in Wayland.

Cheers,
Wol

Rewriting ancient code

Posted Feb 27, 2023 19:57 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (7 responses)

The only references I can find to it on LWN are from you, so it's not there.

(I am not aware of an X12, FWIW. But I'm just a random nobody.)

Rewriting ancient code

Posted Feb 28, 2023 1:48 UTC (Tue) by mrugiero (guest, #153040) [Link] (6 responses)

I think all of us mean this: https://www.x.org/wiki/Development/X12/

It never got to a proper planning phase, but was just some discussion as to what a successor for X11 would require. Eventually the people involved (I think) ended up creating Wayland instead. From what I gather, the name was just to mean "what's next from X11" rather than actually an official successor.

Rewriting ancient code

Posted Feb 28, 2023 11:10 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (5 responses)

So Wayland essentially is X12, so far as implementation goes.

Rewriting ancient code

Posted Feb 28, 2023 12:12 UTC (Tue) by jem (subscriber, #24231) [Link] (3 responses)

>So Wayland essentially is X12, so far as implementation goes.

I really don't recognize Wayland in that text. The first part is a list of general requirements, nothing specific to X or what Wayland was to become. The latter part is just a list of X11 limitations, like "XIDs are too small", "[X11 protocol] extension space is too small", "Strings for [X11] Atom names", and so on, none of which have any meaning for Wayland.

Rewriting ancient code

Posted Feb 28, 2023 14:27 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

I think that's why Wayland isn't X11.

X11 has fundamental design flaws in an insecure world, and having "designed" X12, they presumably decided they couldn't evolve X, so they took all that into account and started again.

Cheers,
Wol

Rewriting ancient code

Posted Feb 28, 2023 14:30 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

Yeah, that doc seems very X11 centric. Hence my "in implementation" qualification.

Rewriting ancient code

Posted Feb 28, 2023 14:31 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

I.e., the next protocol after X11 is Wayland, effectively X12.

That there exists a very early planning document in that process, a very incomplete wiki doc, that viewed the future in an X11 context, doesn't mean Wayland is not that next protocol after X11.

Rewriting ancient code

Posted Mar 1, 2023 20:30 UTC (Wed) by mrugiero (guest, #153040) [Link]

That's a bit what I meant, although the phrasing was a little poor on my side. Rather than "ended up creating Wayland" I should have said "it was different enough that they chose to call it Wayland". In part I kept ambiguous due to laziness, I didn't want to check whether the exact same people was involved.