Re: [Rd] Wayland Display Support in R Plot

[David Bellot]

Hi,

following on this topic, having full support for Wayland in R would be
great indeed.
In the news this week, after GNOME removed X11 support, KDE is doing the
same. I really love X11, but maybe it's time to move forward.
I've been using GNOME + Wayland for more than a year now, including screen
sharing with various video call software (Google, Zoom, etc...) and had no
issues at all. It works even better than my previous (very long) experience
with X11.

Best,
David

On Tue, Oct 31, 2023 at 12:13 AM Iñaki Ucar  wrote:

> El lun., 30 oct. 2023 12:26, Roger Bivand  escribió:
>
> > I also noticed this:
> >
> > https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/13/gnome_proposes_dropping_x11/
> >
> > which is concerning. Until now, I've retained X11 on Fedora because of
> > difficulties in screen sharing via zoom in Wayland sessions.
> >
>
> KDE Plasma user here. FWIW, I've been using Wayland for a year and a half
> now with no issues, including screen sharing, etc.
>
> Iñaki
>
>
> > Roger
> >
> > --
> > Roger Bivand
> > Emeritus Professor
> > Norwegian School of Economics
> > Postboks 3490 Ytre Sandviken, 5045 Bergen, Norway
> > roger.biv...@nhh.no
> > __
> > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> >
>
> [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> __
> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

__
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

Re: [Rd] Wayland Display Support in R Plot

[Iñaki Ucar]

El lun., 30 oct. 2023 12:26, Roger Bivand  escribió:

> I also noticed this:
>
> https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/13/gnome_proposes_dropping_x11/
>
> which is concerning. Until now, I've retained X11 on Fedora because of
> difficulties in screen sharing via zoom in Wayland sessions.
>

KDE Plasma user here. FWIW, I've been using Wayland for a year and a half
now with no issues, including screen sharing, etc.

Iñaki


> Roger
>
> --
> Roger Bivand
> Emeritus Professor
> Norwegian School of Economics
> Postboks 3490 Ytre Sandviken, 5045 Bergen, Norway
> roger.biv...@nhh.no
> __
> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

__
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

Re: [Rd] Wayland Display Support in R Plot

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 30 October 2023 at 13:17, Willem Ligtenberg via R-devel wrote:
| I just tried it on Ubuntu 23.10. It seems to just work.
| See screenshot here: https://nextcloud.wligtenberg.nl/s/jnbDT4ZiHw2JQ8H
| I should be using wayland, and as far as I know I haven't done anything 
| special to make this work. But there might be some compatibility layer 
| that is active by default.

Same here under trusted 22.04 LTS on that older / not quite healthy laptop.
All it took was to set WaylandEnable=true in /etc/gdm3/custom.conf and a
systemctl call to restart gdm3.

R plots fine in the x11() default device via plot(cumsum(rnorm(100)), type="l").

Like Roger, I had issues with some third-party apps (obs to record lectures
comes to mind, maybe also zoom ?) so "we'll see".

Dirk

-- 
dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | e...@debian.org

__
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

Re: [Rd] Wayland Display Support in R Plot

[Willem Ligtenberg via R-devel]

On 29-10-2023 22:29, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> On 30 October 2023 at 09:20, Simon Urbanek wrote:
> | > On 30/10/2023, at 8:38 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel  wrote:
> | > On 30 October 2023 at 07:54, Paul Murrell wrote:
> | > | I am unaware of any Wayland display support.
> | > |
> | > | One useful way forward would be an R package that provides such a device
> | > | (along the lines of 'Cairo', 'tikzDevice', et al)
> | >
> | > As I understand it, it is a protocol, and not a device.
> | >
> |
> | Well, X11 is a protocol, not a device, either.
>
> Point taken.
>
> | > I think I needed to fall back to X11 for a particular applications (likely
> | > OBS) so my session tells me (under Settings -> About -> Windowing System) 
> I
> | > am still running X11. I'll check again once I upgrade from Ubuntu 23.04 to
> | > Ubuntu 23.10
>
> Booted an older laptop using 22.04, selected 'not X11' in the gdm dialog but
> the same Gnome Menu still says Windowing System: X11.  So I am no longer sure
> how I would convince myself if I am under Wayland there or not.  The answers
> inhttps://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/202891/how-to-know-whether-wayland-or-x11-is-being-used
> suggest I still run X11 too.  So I got nuttin' here.
>
> In any event, I read OP as asking 'do we need a new device' and I still think
> that the answer to that still is 'likely not' as the X11 compatibility layer
> should cover this.
>
> Dirk
>
I just tried it on Ubuntu 23.10. It seems to just work.
See screenshot here: https://nextcloud.wligtenberg.nl/s/jnbDT4ZiHw2JQ8H
I should be using wayland, and as far as I know I haven't done anything 
special to make this work. But there might be some compatibility layer 
that is active by default.
If it helps, I could try again using distrobox.

Kind regards,

Willem

[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

__
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

Re: [Rd] Wayland Display Support in R Plot

[Roger Bivand]

I also noticed this:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/13/gnome_proposes_dropping_x11/

which is concerning. Until now, I've retained X11 on Fedora because of 
difficulties in screen sharing via zoom in Wayland sessions.

Roger

--
Roger Bivand
Emeritus Professor
Norwegian School of Economics
Postboks 3490 Ytre Sandviken, 5045 Bergen, Norway
roger.biv...@nhh.no
__
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

Re: [Rd] Wayland Display Support in R Plot

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 30 October 2023 at 09:20, Simon Urbanek wrote:
| > On 30/10/2023, at 8:38 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel  wrote:
| > On 30 October 2023 at 07:54, Paul Murrell wrote:
| > | I am unaware of any Wayland display support.
| > | 
| > | One useful way forward would be an R package that provides such a device 
| > | (along the lines of 'Cairo', 'tikzDevice', et al)
| > 
| > As I understand it, it is a protocol, and not a device.
| > 
| 
| Well, X11 is a protocol, not a device, either.

Point taken.

| > I think I needed to fall back to X11 for a particular applications (likely
| > OBS) so my session tells me (under Settings -> About -> Windowing System) I
| > am still running X11. I'll check again once I upgrade from Ubuntu 23.04 to
| > Ubuntu 23.10

Booted an older laptop using 22.04, selected 'not X11' in the gdm dialog but
the same Gnome Menu still says Windowing System: X11.  So I am no longer sure
how I would convince myself if I am under Wayland there or not.  The answers
in 
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/202891/how-to-know-whether-wayland-or-x11-is-being-used
suggest I still run X11 too.  So I got nuttin' here.

In any event, I read OP as asking 'do we need a new device' and I still think
that the answer to that still is 'likely not' as the X11 compatibility layer
should cover this.  

Dirk

-- 
dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | e...@debian.org

__
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

Re: [Rd] Wayland Display Support in R Plot

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 29/10/2023 4:20 p.m., Simon Urbanek wrote:




On 30/10/2023, at 8:38 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel  wrote:


On 30 October 2023 at 07:54, Paul Murrell wrote:
| I am unaware of any Wayland display support.
|
| One useful way forward would be an R package that provides such a device
| (along the lines of 'Cairo', 'tikzDevice', et al)

As I understand it, it is a protocol, and not a device.



Well, X11 is a protocol, not a device, either.

Wayland is a lot worse, since it doesn't really do much at all - the clients 
are fully responsible for drawing (doesn't even support remote connections).

Given that Wayland is essentially a "dumb" framebuffer, probably the easiest 
way would be to take Cairo and add a libwayland back-end. Cairo is already modular so 
it's relatively straight-forward to add a new back-end to it (I'd probably just copy 
xlib-backend.c and replace X11 calls with libwayland calls since the low-level design is 
the same).

However, that is limited only to devices, so you would still run R code in the 
shell (or other GUI that may or may not by Wayland-based). Given that Wayland 
is so minimal, you'd need some GUI library for anything beyond that - so you 
may was well just run a Wayland-based browser and be done with it saving you 
all the bother (oh, right, that's called RStudio ;)).

One package that may be worth adding Wayland backend to is rgl so you get 
OpenGL on Wayland - I'd simply re-write it to use GLFW so it works across all 
platforms and including Wayland.


I looked into using GLFW a while ago, but it seemed too hard to do 
without other really major changes to rgl, so that's not going to happen 
soon (unless someone else does it).


I think the issue was that it was hard to get it to work with the 
ancient OpenGL 1.2 that rgl uses.  I forget whether it was just hard or 
actually impossible.


I am slowly working towards having rgl use newer OpenGL versions, but I 
don't expect this to be done for quite a while.


Duncan Murdoch


Cheers,
Simon




Several Linux distributions have long defaulted to it, so we already should
have thousands of users. While 'not X11' it provides a compatibility layer
and should be seamless.

I think I needed to fall back to X11 for a particular applications (likely
OBS) so my session tells me (under Settings -> About -> Windowing System) I
am still running X11. I'll check again once I upgrade from Ubuntu 23.04 to
Ubuntu 23.10

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(protocol) for more.

Dirk

--
dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | e...@debian.org

__
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel



__
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel


__
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

Re: [Rd] Wayland Display Support in R Plot

[Simon Urbanek]

> On 30/10/2023, at 8:38 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel  wrote:
> 
> 
> On 30 October 2023 at 07:54, Paul Murrell wrote:
> | I am unaware of any Wayland display support.
> | 
> | One useful way forward would be an R package that provides such a device 
> | (along the lines of 'Cairo', 'tikzDevice', et al)
> 
> As I understand it, it is a protocol, and not a device.
> 

Well, X11 is a protocol, not a device, either.

Wayland is a lot worse, since it doesn't really do much at all - the clients 
are fully responsible for drawing (doesn't even support remote connections).

Given that Wayland is essentially a "dumb" framebuffer, probably the easiest 
way would be to take Cairo and add a libwayland back-end. Cairo is already 
modular so it's relatively straight-forward to add a new back-end to it (I'd 
probably just copy xlib-backend.c and replace X11 calls with libwayland calls 
since the low-level design is the same).

However, that is limited only to devices, so you would still run R code in the 
shell (or other GUI that may or may not by Wayland-based). Given that Wayland 
is so minimal, you'd need some GUI library for anything beyond that - so you 
may was well just run a Wayland-based browser and be done with it saving you 
all the bother (oh, right, that's called RStudio ;)).

One package that may be worth adding Wayland backend to is rgl so you get 
OpenGL on Wayland - I'd simply re-write it to use GLFW so it works across all 
platforms and including Wayland.

Cheers,
Simon



> Several Linux distributions have long defaulted to it, so we already should
> have thousands of users. While 'not X11' it provides a compatibility layer
> and should be seamless.
> 
> I think I needed to fall back to X11 for a particular applications (likely
> OBS) so my session tells me (under Settings -> About -> Windowing System) I
> am still running X11. I'll check again once I upgrade from Ubuntu 23.04 to
> Ubuntu 23.10
> 
> See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(protocol) for more.
> 
> Dirk
> 
> -- 
> dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | e...@debian.org
> 
> __
> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> 

__
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

Re: [Rd] Wayland Display Support in R Plot

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 30 October 2023 at 07:54, Paul Murrell wrote:
| I am unaware of any Wayland display support.
| 
| One useful way forward would be an R package that provides such a device 
| (along the lines of 'Cairo', 'tikzDevice', et al)

As I understand it, it is a protocol, and not a device.

Several Linux distributions have long defaulted to it, so we already should
have thousands of users. While 'not X11' it provides a compatibility layer
and should be seamless.

I think I needed to fall back to X11 for a particular applications (likely
OBS) so my session tells me (under Settings -> About -> Windowing System) I
am still running X11. I'll check again once I upgrade from Ubuntu 23.04 to
Ubuntu 23.10

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(protocol) for more.

Dirk

-- 
dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | e...@debian.org

__
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

Re: [Rd] Wayland Display Support in R Plot

[Paul Murrell]

Hi

I am unaware of any Wayland display support.

One useful way forward would be an R package that provides such a device 
(along the lines of 'Cairo', 'tikzDevice', et al)


Paul

On 27/10/23 23:16, quentin.thorne via R-devel wrote:

Hello,

I'm interested in understanding the current state of Wayland display 
support in R plot, and I was wondering if any progress or discussions 
have taken place regarding this matter.


As Wayland continues to gain popularity as a display protocol on modern 
Linux systems, having Wayland support for R's plotting capabilities 
would be a significant enhancement.


Could anyone provide information on the current status of Wayland 
support in R plot? Are there any ongoing efforts, discussions, or 
packages in development that address this issue? I would appreciate any 
insights or guidance in this regard.


Thank you for your time and assistance.

Best regards,

Quentin Thorne
[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

__
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel 



--
Dr Paul Murrell
Te Kura Tatauranga | Department of Statistics
Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
64 9 3737599 x85392
p...@stat.auckland.ac.nz
www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~paul/

__
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

[Rd] Wayland Display Support in R Plot

[quentin.thorne via R-devel]

Hello,

I'm interested in understanding the current state of Wayland display support in 
R plot, and I was wondering if any progress or discussions have taken place 
regarding this matter.

As Wayland continues to gain popularity as a display protocol on modern Linux 
systems, having Wayland support for R's plotting capabilities would be a 
significant enhancement.

Could anyone provide information on the current status of Wayland support in R 
plot? Are there any ongoing efforts, discussions, or packages in development 
that address this issue? I would appreciate any insights or guidance in this 
regard.

Thank you for your time and assistance.

Best regards,

Quentin Thorne
[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

__
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel