On Thu, 31 Dec 2020 08:18:02 -0600
o1bigtenor <o1bigtenor@???> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 4:34 PM Steve Litt
> <slitt@???> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 30 Dec 2020 09:51:33 -1000
> > Joel Roth via Dng <dng@???> wrote:
> snip
> > One question: How does your above statement hold up when Wayland
> > becomes the law of the land?
> >
>
> Greetings
>
> From what little I"ve been able to discern about Wayland I really
> hope that it doesn't become the law of the land.

Me too. My impression is that Wayland is from the same crew who brought
us systemd, will probably require systemd unless modified, and breaks
all the UI software I currently use (Openbox and dmenu).

The problem is that X really sucks, and unlike systemd, there are no
alternatives like runit, s6, Epoch, Busybox init, or OpenRC to prevent
it from being a binary choice. I'll keep X as long as possible, because
"sucks" is better than "breaks all your software" or "requires
systemd". But much like that nasty UEFI, sooner or later I think we'll
be stuck with it.

<rant>
It didn't have to be this way. In 2020, better alternatives could have
been made. If I were the project manager, the first thing I'd do is
uncouple keyboard, mouse and video from each other. Why X has anything
to do with keyboard or mouse is beyond me.

Next, I'd base the video solution on SVG. It's clean, scaleable,
convertable to just about anything including a bitmap for your screen.
It's a standard, and it doesn't depend on what init system you're
using, or any other extraneous nonsense.

If SVG is too slow and bulky because it's XML, I'd create a smaller
version of SVG. I'm not going to do this, because I'm not smart enough.
But I'm pretty sure it could be done and would blow the doors off of
either X or Wayland.

As far as the keyboard, we had that completely solved in 1989, with
interrupts and keymaps. Add in internationalization, which is a problem
solved many years ago, and that's all you need for the keyboard.

All you need to know for mice is either the coordinates that got
clicked or other-evented, or the object. I've already made several
interactive SVG files, with Inkscape, that, when displayed in a browser,
change colors or whatever on events, or institute software commands
(which of course could be generalized callback routines).

It didn't have to be a choice between Wayland and X, but it is, thanks
to an organization I might despise more than Poettering/Redhat:
FreeDesktop.Org.
</rant>

SteveT

Steve Litt
Autumn 2020 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/thrive