wdisplays Collaboration

[alex-courtis]

https://github.com/artizirk/wdisplays offers a GUI to set wayland output properties:

• scale
• position
• size
• refresh
• translation

way-displays lacks a GUI however persistently supports all the above, with yaml file and CLI interface.

wdisplays and way-displays could work together via IPC API or be merged.

[alex-courtis]

@artizirk I am not able to raise an issue in the wdisplays repo hence I have raised one here.

Would you be interested in collaborating? The feature sets of way-displays and wdisplays are mostly orthogonal and complement each other well.

[artizirk]

Collaboration would be awesome! Tho I don't have much free time to work on extra features. It would be cool if we could merge. @alex-courtis if you are up to it I could give you commit access.

[alex-courtis]

That's fantastic!

There are a few options available:

• separate executables communicating via IPC
  • wdisplays (maybe way-displays-gui?) and way-displays are separately distributed
  • distributed together
• completely merged using C API

I can do some exploring on a branch of wdisplays if you grant me access. Of course, I also lack time...

I don't think we need many new features, maybe just:

• adaptive sync
• snap position ROW/COL instead of directly setting
• save button!

[alex-courtis]

wdisplays allows addition of custom modes. This functionality could be added to way-displays.

[artizirk]

@alex-courtis I recently gave commit access also to @redtide who has been quite helpful in mergeing and updating wdisplays repo. I would be cool to hear what ideas @redtide has.

[redtide]

Hello! I'm quite focused on some projects of mine, so can't help much in what I think is a delicate step of merging projects. My (generic) ideas about the context is that if the projects are lots of things in common (though needing some adaptation) and share most objectives it's a great thing to make them a single project (more people, more maintainers, same project).
From a first glance I'm for:

• merge in a single UI application that can work also from command line (no IPC, though I'm not against it)
• have both manual and automatic "snap to grid (?)" methods

[alex-courtis]

Hello @redtide thank you for your recent work and interest!

it's a great thing to make them a single project

Yes. We don't have to make any decisions immediately; a simple and practical solution will become apparent.

• merge in a single UI application that can work also from command line (no IPC, though I'm not against it)

way-displays has a CLI. It does use IPC to talk to the server.

We can do whichever is simplest and most reliable.

• have both manual and automatic "snap to grid (?)" methods

In addition to ARRANGE/ALIGN there are some ideas here #79

[redtide]

way-displays has a CLI. It does use IPC to talk to the server.

I gave it a look early at its features, I didn't mean to not use it in "way-display"/CLI part, I wasn't clear: I was talking about from "wdisplays" POV, where the "UI" part is interactive, but I don't have a clear view of the situation with the two merged.

In addition to ARRANGE/ALIGN there are some ideas here #79

For "manual" I meant to keep the wdisplay manual adjustment, then add also way-display presets/alignment features.
Looking at that issue I'm not sure, it sounds like it works on simple/most configurations (like max 3 monitors), but for some reason I had in mind a "what if using many monitors in a desktop PC with several video cards outputs?". "LEFT/RIGHT/TOP/MIDDLE/BOTTOM" would not suffice, or am I exaggerating? Or what about a "X:Y" setting referring to a hypothetical grid?

[alex-courtis]

I was talking about from "wdisplays" POV, where the "UI" part is interactive, but I don't have a clear view of the situation with the two merged.

There are many opportunities here. The UI could be, say, part of the daemon way-displays process, appearing on demand, directly applying and persisting changes.

"LEFT/RIGHT/TOP/MIDDLE/BOTTOM" would not suffice, or am I exaggerating? Or what about a "X:Y" setting referring to a hypothetical grid?

Work must be done to enable way-displays to persist all the types of layouts set via the UI.
Layouts would be still be implicitly configurable via the config file, however the practical means is the UI.
The opportunity here is for the UI to drive new configuration schema, which has so far been conceptually elusive.

[alex-courtis]

Some interop options:

• way-displays / wdisplays one process
• separate processes communicating via
  • cfg.yaml read/write
  • IPC

[zjeffer]

@alex-courtis @redtide @artizirk Any updates regarding this collaboration?

[alex-courtis]

I think all the pieces are there, we just need people time to build it.

[alex-courtis]

See artizirk/wdisplays#21