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Sway-and-client-side-decorations.md (2327B)

    

  1. ---
  2. date: 2018-01-27
  3. title: Sway and client side decorations
  4. layout: post
  5. tags: [sway, gnome, wayland]
  6. ---
  8. You may have recently seen an article from GNOME on the subject of client side
  9. decorations (CSD) titled [Introducing the CSD
  10. Initiative](https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2018/01/26/csd-initiative/). It
  11. states some invalid assumptions which I want to clarify, and I want to tell you
  12. [Sway](https://github.com/swaywm/sway)'s
  13. stance on the subject. I also speak for the rest of the projects involved in
  14. [wlroots](https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots) on this matter, including [Way
  15. Cooler](https://github.com/way-cooler/way-cooler),
  16. [waymonad](https://github.com/Ongy/waymonad), and
  17. [bspwc](https://github.com/Bl4ckb0ne/bspwc).
  19. The subject of which party is responsible for window decorations on Wayland (the
  20. client or the server) has been a subject of much debate. I want to clarify that
  21. though GNOME may imply that a consensus has been reached, this is not the case.
  22. CSD have real problems that have long been waved away by its supporters:
  24. - No consistent look and feel between clients and GUI toolkits
  25. - Misbehaving clients cannot be moved, closed, minimized, etc
  26. - No opportunity for compositors to customize behavior (e.g. tabbed windows on
  27.   Sway)
  29. We are willing to cooperate on a compromise, but GNOME does not want to
  30. entertain the discussion and would rather push disingenuous propaganda for their
  31. cause. The topic of the #wayland channel on Freenode includes the statement
  32. "Please do not argue about server-side vs. client-side decorations. It's settled
  33. and won't change." I have been banned from this channel for over a year because
  34. I persistently called for compromise.
  36. GNOME's statement that "[server-side decorations] do not (and will never) work
  37. on Wayland" is false. KDE and Sway have long agreed on the importance of these
  38. problems and have worked together on a solution. We have developed and
  39. implemented a Wayland protocol extension which allows the compositor and client
  40. to negotiate what kind of decorations each wishes to use. KDE, Sway, Way Cooler,
  41. waymonad, and bspwc are all committed to supporting server-side decorations on
  42. our compositors.
  44. ---
  46. See also: [Martin Flöser of KDE responds to GNOME's
  47. article](https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2018/01/server-side-decorations-and-wayland/)