[enhancement] Wayland port

[Arnaudv6]

Hello Markus. I Still use PieDock and love it.
I often check on wayland's support state for the pieces of software I use the most,
I would like to know : do you fancy porting PieDock to wayland on the long run ?

[markusfisch]

Hi Arnaud, I would really like to do a Wayland port some day. Although not in the near future to be honest. Of course you're right, X11 is slowly dying and so it's probably about time to start thinking about that.

Do you experience any problems with PieDock on Wayland?

[Arnaudv6]

Well I am not moving to wayland any time soon either.
For now, I can't seem to run piedock under wayland, for I did not allow xwayland. So no particular problem encountered.

[Arnaudv6]

update: I am on the move to wayland (https://github.com/swaywm/sway)
and with gparted, gimp and claws-mail ported to gtk3, there will only be piedock, for me to sorely miss.

[markusfisch]

Well, I really should take a look at Wayland.

[Arnaudv6]

sway is really a nice project, with hightly talented and dedicated dev team: their IRC might help a lot.

[Arnaudv6]

I sort of started a python/GTK rewrite.
https://gitlab.com/Arnaudv6/waypiedock
This quick and dirty script is nowhere close to your app, but it fills the gap for me.
Sorry for not committing here: it seemed easier this way for me.

[markusfisch]

Very nice! 👍 Thanks for sharing! I really like that approach!

Just out of curiosity, do you plan to add the zooming effect or don't you like it all that much?

[Arnaudv6]

Hey Markus,
Eventually, yes !
And thanks for your positive comments on both this script... and my attitude! 👍

I did not yet take the time to write a README file in that "project" folder of mine,
But it would go something like that:
(this post's gonna be long, but I feel I owe you this, for allowing the workflow I so love)

I love this pie-shaped-dock of yours. I take you for inventing it in the first place and I think I am right.
And I reckon it hits the perfect sweet spot for me in terms of performance/features/non-features.

Speaking of features, my quick script still lags far behind Piedock:

• no indicator for already running programs
• not trying to raise said program before creating a new instance
• not adding running programs to the list if they're not in yet
• not creating self-window under the cursor on wayland yet
• no zoom / dim effect implemented yet
• python and GTK are much confort to building this, but they got to say something on performance, compared to your Cpp.

And so on...
Escept for the last point, I hope to bring every thing in eventually.
But there is no rush yet, as I still mainly use xorg and Piedock for days to come, due to other softs not yet ready. (That might change soon though)

Furthermore, I have a rationale for using Piedock, beyond it being sexy:
Workflow-wise, it is the perfect balance to me.

• krunner likes: I've tried them all. They're great, but one quickly depends so much on them he'd replace even the file-manager with it.
  And as with the dmenu-likes, you got to have two hands on the keyboard. (1)
• Latte Dock and the likes: I've tried much. The grand mouse displacement required to reach for wanted item is a pain on the long run. I did not see this at first, I see this now that I use Piedock.
• Piedock is great: with my left hand on keyboard I press a keybinding, and it pops under the mouse, with a sexy UI that requires the smallest movement possible to reach your aim. I love it.

(1) Sorry with hardcode coders here, but I don't join the cause: one does not spend the day with both hands on keyboard. One spends half the day browsing the web. And as much as I would like a web with no javascript menus, no media tags and all, given what the web is, I don't fall for keyboard driven browsers. I also use the GIMP, and many software with one hand on the mouse.

[Arnaudv6]

So thanks. 👍

[markusfisch]

Thanks for your kind words! I really appreciate any feedback, especially when it's so positive, of course 😉 But I really didn't invent pie menus - just that zooming effect was my little contribution to the idea. Which I still think is very sexy, too 😁

About GTK/Python, I'm not sure they will be a bottleneck. I wrote the original version in 2010 for the hardware I had back then. Maybe GTK/Python will be fast enough on a modern machine? I would really like to see a GTK/Python port! 👍

And I love PieDock for the same reasons you so aptly described! I wrote it for just that setup: one hand on the keyboard, the other one on the mouse. Because I use GIMP and the web a lot too 😉