libinput and semi-mt touchpads

libinput 1.1.5 has a change in how we deal with semi-mt touchpads, in particular: interpretation of touch points will cease and we will rely on the single touch position and the BTN_TOOL_* flags instead to detect multi-finger interaction. For most of you this will have little effect, even if you have a semi-mt touchpad. As a reminder: semi-mt touchpads are those that can detect the bounding box of two-finger interactions but cannot identify which finger is which. This provides some ambiguity, a pair of touch points at x1/y1 and x2/y2 could be a physical pair of touches at x1/y2 and x2/y1. More importantly, we found issues with semi-mt touchpads that go beyond the ambiguity and reduce the usability of the touchpoints.

Some devices have an extremely low resolution when two-fingers are down (see Bug 91135), the data is little better than garbage. We have had 2-finger scrolling disabled on these touchpads since before libinput 1.0. More recently, Bug 93583 showed that some semi-mt touchpads do not assign the finger positions for some fingers, especially when three fingers are down. This results in touches defaulting to position 0/0 which triggers palm detection or results in scroll jumps, neither of which are helpful. Other semi-mt touchpads assign a straightforward 0/0 as position data and don't update until several events later (see Red Hat Bug 1295073). libinput is not particularly suited to handle this, and even if it did, the touchpad's reaction to a three-finger tap would be noticeably delayed.

In light of these problems, and since these affect all three big semi-mt touchpad manufacturers we decided to drop back and handle semi-mt touchpads as single-finger touchpads with extra finger capability. This means we track only one touchpoint but detect two- and three-finger interactions. Two-finger scrolling is still possible and so is two- and three-finger tapping or the clickfinger behaviour. What isn't possible anymore are pinch gestures and some of the built-in palm detection is deactivated. As mentioned above, this is unlikely to affect you too much, but if you're wondering why gestures don't work on your semi-mt device: the data is garbage.

Is Wayland ready yet?

This question turns up a lot, on the irc channel, mailing lists, forums, your local Stammtisch and at weddings. The correct answer is: this is the wrong question. And I'll explain why in this post. Note that I'll be skipping over a couple of technical bits, if you notice those then you're probably not the person that needs to ask the question in the first place.

On your current Linux desktop, right now, you have at least three processes running: the X server, a window manager/compositor and your web browser. The X server is responsible for rendering things to the screen and handling your input. The window manager is responsible for telling the X server where to render the web browser window. Your web browser is responsible for displaying this post. The X server and the window manager communicate over the X protocol, the X server and the web browser do so too. The browser and the window manager communicate through X properties using the X server as a middle man. That too is done via the X protocol. Note: This is of course a very simplified view.

Wayland is a protocol and it replaces the X protocol. Under Wayland, you only need two processes: a compositor and your web browser. The compositor is effectively equivalent to the X server and window manager merged into one thing, and it communicates with the web browser over the Wayland protocol. For this to work you need the compositor and the web browser to be able to understand the Wayland protocol.

This is why the question "is wayland ready yet" does not make a lot of sense. Wayland is the communication protocol and says very little about the implementation of the two sides that you want to communicate.

Let's assume a scenario where we all decide to switch from English to French because it sounds nicer and English was designed in the 80s when ASCII was king so it doesn't support those funky squiggles that the French like to put on every second character. In this scenario, you wouldn't ask "Is French ready yet?" If no-one around you speaks French yet, then that's not the language not being ready, the implementation (i.e. the humans) aren't ready. Maybe you can use French in a restaurant, but not yet in the supermarket. Maybe one waiter speaks both English and French, but the other one French only. So whether you can use French depends very much on the situation. But everyone agrees that eventually we'll all speak French, even though English will hang around for ages until it finally falls out of use. And those squiggles are so cute!

Wayland is the same. The protocol is stable and has been for a while. But not every compositor and/or toolkit/application speak Wayland yet, so it may not be sufficient for your use-case. So rather than asking "Is Wayland ready yet", you should be asking: "Can I run GNOME/KDE/Enlightenment/etc. under Wayland?" That is the right question to ask, and the answer is generally "It depends what you expect to work flawlessly." This also means "people working on Wayland" is often better stated as "people working on Wayland support in ....".

An exception to the above: Wayland as a protocol defines what you can talk about. As a young protocol (compared to X with 30 years worth of extensions) there are things that should be defined in the protocol but aren't yet. For example, Wacom tablet support is currently missing. Those are the legitimate cases where you can say Wayland isn't ready yet and where people are "working on Wayland". Of course, once the protocol is agreed on, you fall back to the above case: both sides of the equation need to implement the new protocol before you can make use of it.

Update 25/01/15: Matthias' answer to Is GNOME on Wayland ready yet?

X.Org the project vs X.Org the Foundation

In light of recent general confusion between X.Org the technical project and X.Org the Foundation here's a little overview.

X.Org the project

X.Org is the current reference implementation of the X Window System which has been around since the mid-80s. Its most prominent members is the X server and the related drivers but we put a whole bunch of other things under the same umbrella, e.g. mesa, drm, and - yes - wayland. Like most free software projects it is loosely organised and very few developers are involved in everything, everybody has their niche. If you're running Linux or a BSD and you can see a desktop environment in front of you, X.Org the technical project is somewhere in that stack.

X.Org the Foundation

The foundation is a non-profit organisation tasked with the stewardship of the X Window System, particularly the X.Org implementation. The most important thing is: the X.Org Foundation does not control the technical direction, it acts in a supporting role only. X.Org has a 501(c)3 tax code in the US which means that donations can be tax deducted (though we haven't collected donations in years). It also means that how we can spend money is very restricted. These days the Foundation's supporting roles are largely: sponsoring the annual X Developers Conference (XDC), providing travel sponsorship to XDC attendees and be the organisation to participate in the Google Summer of Code. Oh, and did I mention that the X.Org Foundation does not control the technical direction?

What does it matter?

The difference matters, especially for well-nuanced and thought-out statements like "X must die" in response to articles about the X.Org Foundation. If you want the Foundation to cease to exist, you're essentially saying "XDC and X.Org's GSoC participation must die". Given that a significant percentage of those two are now Wayland-related that may have some unintended side-effects. If you want the technical project to die, it may be wise to consider the side-effects. Wayland isn't quite ready yet, much of the work that is done under the umbrella of X benefits Wayland (libinput, graphics driver work, etc.).

Now if you excuse me, there's a windmill that needs tilting at. Rocinante, where are you?