Re: Fwd: Wayland design principles (Re: wayland and gambas)

[Rolf-Werner Eilert <rwe-sse@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Am 30.04.24 um 01:40 schrieb Jussi Lahtinen:
>     If you do not have a coordinate system you can point to, you still MUST
>     have some way of telling the window manager where (about) you wish
>     it to
>     show something up and how.
>
>     Maybe there is an indirect way like telling it "please show this window
>     in 33% of the current screen size somewhere in the center". Otherwise,
>     wayland would only be able to serve frameless windows in
>     whole-screen-mode, like on mobiles or - as he put it - on car screens.
>     But it runs on normal screens with windows with all widgets, so how is
>     it achieved?
>
>     On a printed page, you usually count mm and the printer system will
>     translate this into pixels for its individual wand. There must be
>     such a
>     way in Wayland too - and Pekka does mention a translation layer for
>     older applications. It's just a shame they seem to realize this only
>     now.
>
>
> This is a good point. I wonder how it will work without knowing the 
> pixel coordinates.
> Definitely not my area of expertise.
>
> Jussi

I should have added, the way HTML is rendered is similar too. You define 
kinda general look, the details are left to the browser engine (with 
clear problems sometimes, that's for sure).

On the one hand, I can understand the point of the guys to create one 
general window manager for all kinds of different applications on all 
kind of different screens without bothering the coders with details. 
It's somehow like Swift etc. with defining "I need an app form (say 
window) and a button and an input box" and the rest is made by the 
system: always looks good on any phone, tablet, POS terminal, laptop, PC 
or whatsover.

In the German c't magazine lately they had an article about KDE 6 with 
qt6 and specialized to Wayland, and they found it "ok though opposed by 
many" mainly because of the security aspects ("formerly applications 
were the masters of any pixel on the screen and thus could block the 
whole system").

IMHO the way in the middle should be best: I see the point in security 
and display variety, but I would still give the coder a chance to define 
behaviour for a certain class of display, say laptop and PC, as anyone 
is used to it. When some user feels like starting my app on a phone or 
tablet, these options will not apply. So simple.

By the way, I do not like this new look without any title bar which has 
the grip to draw the window. What's a menu bar instead of title bar good 
for? On a tablet, ok... but not on PC or laptop. I mention this because 
in said article they had screenshots with those.

Regards
Rolf