On 2022-03-12 at 01:29, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote: > On Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 03:41:09PM -0500, The Wanderer wrote: > > [...] > >> The most important one for my purposes, and therefore the one that >> I remember, is the ability to have multiple desktop-like things >> which are actually all just viewports on one much-larger single >> area [...] > > There seems to be some basis to it. And some solution. But then, > you're perhaps bound to a specific toolkit [1] [2] or perhaps > compositor. > [1] https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/linux-graphics-x-org-drivers/wayland-display-server/1074550-kde-now-has-virtual-desktop-support-on-wayland > and the links therein. It's more complicated than that, unfortunately. There's a reason I didn't use the phrase "virtual desktops" in my description of this feature; the X spec defines *two* things which are sometimes called by that name. One of them has a single large "desktop" with multiple viewports into it; on that one the parts of one window that stick off the edge of one viewport overflow into, and can be seen through, an adjacent viewport. That's the feature I was talking about, but it is *not* the feature most commonly called "virtual desktops", although some WMs (including, IIRC, e16) do call it that; I don't know if it has any other dedicated name, although the X spec does refer to it in different terminology. My understanding is that this is the thing the Wayland developers saw as so odd that it couldn't possibly be used/wanted by anyone and had to just be a historical-curiosity wart on the spec. The other defines multiple separate "desktops", which are logically arranged into a grid for purposes of indexing and access, but which are individually independent; anything sticking off the edge of any one of them is not visible anywhere. That, as I understand matters, is the feature commonly called "virtual desktops". It's my understanding that this feature *is* possible via, and maybe even directly supported by, Wayland. It's difficult or impossible to tell for certain from the limited discussion in the links provided, but it looks to me (having dug through as far as the Phabricator discussion) as if what KDE added support for is the latter. (FWIW, e16 apparently supports *both* of these features, although the major rewrite that was e17 and later dropped support for the first one; that's one of the reasons I haven't moved forward to newer versions of Enlightenment.) -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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