Re: [gentoo-user] Lots of issues with wayland

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hello, Arsen.

On Tue, Aug 06, 2024 at 15:56:40 +0200, Arsen Arsenović wrote:
> "J. Aho" <gentoo@kotiaho.net> writes:

> > On 05/08/2024 18.30, Daniel Frey wrote:
> >> Is it just me or is wayland nowhere near primetime?

> > There are still issues with wayland, not sure how up to date this page is:
> > https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277

> it's either out of date or fearmongering.  I'd presume the former if not
> for the first emphasised paragraph of the post: "DO NOT USE A WAYLAND
> SESSION! Let Wayland not destroy everything and then have other people
> fix the damage it caused. Or force more Red Hat/Gnome components (glib,
> Portals, Pipewire) on everyone".

> but, each "point" it makes can individually be debunked also.  I'm not
> very interested in doing that beyond oneliners though (which is
> apparently enough for the author of the original post).

I'm interested in one of the points you address in particular, namely:

[ .... ]

> - Wayland breaks setting the window position - yes, intentionally,
>   wayland is declarative wrt window positioning (you might notice that
>   if you right click, the popup position is as you'd expect - this is
>   because the client tells the compositor where /relative to a surface/
>   it wants some other surface to appear, rather than a global position).

This has caused problems for Emacs, though I can't remember exactly how,
so I'm guessing.  On restarting a saved Emacs session, it's necessary to
have the windows the same size, in the same place they were on saving
the session.  This would appear to be difficult in Wayland.

You say "yes, intentionally, wayland is declarative wrt window
positioning".  What does that mean when you replace abstract words like
"declarative" with concrete sentences?  What is declaring what to what
else in this context, and what does that have to do with not being able
to position windows?

Later on, you say "where /relative to a surface/".  I think "surface" is
a word with particular meaning in Wayland, and using it in a Gentoo list
without explanation is less than helpful.  What does "surface" mean in
this context?  Is the entire screen such a "surface"?

So, is it possible in Wayland to record a configuration of windows,
their sizes and positions, then restore these on starting a program
again?  If not, that would appear to be a design bug in Wayland.  What
am I missing?

[ .... ]

> have a lovely day
> -- 
> Arsen Arsenović

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).