Request: Wayland Support

[lorenzleutgeb]

Currently, some vimtex Features, e.g. cursor sync with Zathura, are not compatible with Wayland. I'd like to request making it compatible. This involves finding out which features are not compatible, first.

The topic has come up in (at least) the two issues linked below. I create this request to allow tracking of Wayland support and to invite other Wayland users to give their "thumbs up" to show its importance.

Is your feature request related to a problem?
Please refer to
#1775
#1719

Describe the solution you'd like
vimtex should support interaction with Wayland, with minimal user-configuration/-interaction.

Describe alternatives you've considered
None. Note that I don't think use "Use X11." is an alternative worth considering.

Additional context
None.

[lervag]

Currently, some vimtex Features, e.g. cursor sync with Zathura, are not compatible with Wayland. I'd like to request making it compatible. This involves finding out which features are not compatible, first.

I don't mind having Wayland support. Or, more correctly: I would be very happy if I could claim VimTeX works perfectly well on Wayland.

As you say, the first step is to know exactly what is lacking on Wayland. As far as I know, the main hurdle is that the Zathura and MuPDF viewers rely on the xdotool command to avoid multiple windows (both) and for some concenient controls (MuPDF).

Another obvious hurdle: I don't use Wayland yet myself. The main, and big, implication: I won't actively work to solve this issue. But I will be more than interested in helping anyone who is interested and able to suggest a solution!

The topic has come up in (at least) the two issues linked below. I create this request to allow tracking of Wayland support and to invite other Wayland users to give their "thumbs up" to show it's importance.

Since I don't use Wayland myself, I think the main impact the thumbs up's may give here is attention to the issue, and perhaps motivation for someone who can help me solve this.

[lervag]

I'm closing this now; not because I'm not interested in progress, but because I won't act on it myself. I would be very happy to see PRs or concrete suggestions, but as long as I don't use Wayland I will require active users who can help both with implementing and testing.

[thetic]

Can we reopen this? I think its still valuable even if it isn't a priority right now.

[lervag]

It's not about priority - instead, it is due to me not having any plan of working on it. I need (competent) users to help with this. I agree it is valuable!

I can reopen and tag this as "help wanted" and "won't fix", though.

[mvasi90]

Hello everyone.

I'm using Wayland and I don't have the xdotool.
Accessing events of another process like injecting or reading keys is a security and privacy leak.

To auto reload Mupdf you can send a HUP signal like this pkill -HUP mupdf when the compilation process ends. But where?

Update
Works well using zathura compiled with synctex flag and zathura-pdf-mupdf.

[lervag]

Accessing events of another process like injecting or reading keys is a security and privacy leak.

Yes, that's probably right. Still, I'm not aware of any actual issues with this in my ~20 year experience with Linux and I am quite sure that this issue is not such a big deal. I'm no expert and of course, I can be wrong.

In any case, I'm glad you got it working!

[krishnakumarg1984]

My University's CS lab have migrated to a wayland-only login session (with fallback to linux console) on the shared lab computers.

Have other users tried and tested vimtex on Wayland? What's the experience so far? xclip, xsel, xdotool are not available on Wayland, right?

[lervag]

I believe xdotool is the most important obstacle here. But I'm not sure if it is a very big deal, really. Just a minor nuisance.