> and have absolutely no idea what is needed from who and where in there.
FWIW i don't exactly know "who" needs to do what either - that is the issue really, in order to get that in the X11 world you need several different people and projects to care to work together. AFAICT most don't really seem to care to make an organized thing.
The main reason Wayland sidesteps some of that is that a Wayland compositor combines the graphics system, the window system and the window manager in one program, meaning that one project can solve everything itself (even if all compositors need to solve it separately), however with X11 you need all window managers and all toolkits to coordinate with each other.
The other reason is that Wayland has buy-in from the two major toolkits, Gtk and Qt. I have a feeling that even if there was an X11 coordination to implement mixed DPI functionality at least Gtk wouldn't bother with it as they want to remove X11 support in Gtk5.
> None of this is obvious.
Well, that was tongue in cheek, i meant that the obvious thing was that it is a mess :-P.
> ISTM that X.org and X11 in general is on the threshold of dying from neglect in the next year or two [...] And since there isn't a single Wayland environment I personally can stomach using, that would be a very bad thing IMHO.
IMO any news of Xorg death are somewhat exaggerated, as i wrote in another reply a couple of days ago, both Xorg and Wayland compositors use the same underlying kernel APIs to access the hardware so if nothing else your current environment will keep working for the foreseeable future. Also i've dabbled a bit in the Xorg code myself and i'm certain it isn't that hard to keep it in working condition - the biggest issue might be people interested in merging patches and making releases but so far it seems to be people who are interested in that.
> in order to get that in the X11 world you need several different people and projects to care to work together
100% believe that and that it's a big problem.
I've seen some say that Xenocara in OpenBSD is the only project with some active R&D going into this today. Any comments on that?
> AFAICT most don't really seem to care to make an organized thing.
Definitely. Of course, if someone somewhere were paying it might be different...
> The main reason Wayland sidesteps some of that is that a Wayland compositor combines [...]
If I may attempt, and this is not meant to be rude, to say what I think that would come across to most even quite nerdy folk as:
Wayland combines tech, tech and tech, but tech still has to tech, whereas with X11, you have to tech, tech and tech separately, and then tech some tech alongside a tech.
> The other reason is that Wayland has buy-in from the two major toolkits, Gtk and Qt.
That's a much bigger issue.
I suspect GNOME 4, aka 3.40, aka 40, is revealing a bigger problem. Just as all the other desktops got up to speed with Gtk 3, GNOME yanked the rug out from under them with Gtk 4.
The GNOME team don't seem to me to care at all about other desktops, and they don't care much about their users' preferences either.
The attitude seems to me to be:
"Hey, Steve Jobs just gave them what he thought they needed, and they loved it, so we can do the same! He took away all their buttons and ports and slots and so on, and made it super simple, and the company is worth trillions! So we can just take away all those options and buttons and functions, all the junk we don't use, like themes and stuff, and they will love it!"
Any project that isn't directly affiliated with GNOME will come to regret using Gtk in time, I suspect.
Qt sounds better, from my uninformed outsider perspective, but I don't know much at all. AIUI the price of entrance is you must use C++ or have a 2nd class experience, and a lot of people don't like C++.
Maybe this is the big chance for the GoLang or DLang folk to prove themselves: do some better, modernised version of one of the other toolkits, say one from olden times like XForms or something, and offer a compelling alternative that's 100% FOSS, and accessible from other languages, not just their pet one.
FWIW i don't exactly know "who" needs to do what either - that is the issue really, in order to get that in the X11 world you need several different people and projects to care to work together. AFAICT most don't really seem to care to make an organized thing.
The main reason Wayland sidesteps some of that is that a Wayland compositor combines the graphics system, the window system and the window manager in one program, meaning that one project can solve everything itself (even if all compositors need to solve it separately), however with X11 you need all window managers and all toolkits to coordinate with each other.
The other reason is that Wayland has buy-in from the two major toolkits, Gtk and Qt. I have a feeling that even if there was an X11 coordination to implement mixed DPI functionality at least Gtk wouldn't bother with it as they want to remove X11 support in Gtk5.
> None of this is obvious.
Well, that was tongue in cheek, i meant that the obvious thing was that it is a mess :-P.
> ISTM that X.org and X11 in general is on the threshold of dying from neglect in the next year or two [...] And since there isn't a single Wayland environment I personally can stomach using, that would be a very bad thing IMHO.
IMO any news of Xorg death are somewhat exaggerated, as i wrote in another reply a couple of days ago, both Xorg and Wayland compositors use the same underlying kernel APIs to access the hardware so if nothing else your current environment will keep working for the foreseeable future. Also i've dabbled a bit in the Xorg code myself and i'm certain it isn't that hard to keep it in working condition - the biggest issue might be people interested in merging patches and making releases but so far it seems to be people who are interested in that.