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Ivan Molodetskikh

I added text rendering to niri using pangocairo, which turned out to be surprisingly simple. It basically "just worked". This unlocks a lot of features, beginning with a hotkey overlay, which should help people get started (suggested by @ju).

I've tagged niri 0.1.0-beta.1 which includes the overlay along with many more improvements: github.com/YaLTeR/niri/release

I'm now happy enough with the feature set so in a week I'll release 0.1.0. Time to finally catch up on other projects I've been neglecting.

niri showing an Important Hotkeys overlay.
20 January at 6:35 | Open on mastodon.online
64 comments
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

I'm pretty excited to finally be able to "release" niri soon but god I'm glad I set aside a beta week for bugfixes. We already stumbled upon and fixed several issues

23 January at 14:50 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

A few latency tests before release confirm that niri's still doing good (at least on idle; I don't have any repaint scheduling yet but on idle it doesn't matter). The compositors are pretty much within the noise threshold from each other. Except some sway fullscreen bug and Shell losing one frame somewhere.

Input latency chart for maximized alacritty showing cosmic-comp, sway, mutter, niri equally low, then GNOME Shell one frame higher.
Input latency chart for fullscreen alacritty showing mutter, cosmic-comp, niri equally low, then sway half a frame higher, then GNOME Shell half a frame higher than that.
26 January at 18:20 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Well, I'm happy to release the first stable version of niri, my scrollable-tiling compositor: github.com/YaLTeR/niri/release

Very satisfied with the current state, even though there's plenty left to do. Took a lot of time and work but I've certainly learned a lot, and I'm glad to have contributed a bit to Smithay too!

#wayland #rust #smithay

Niri showing several windows.
27 January at 13:33 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Before adding more animations into niri, I'm making a "visual tests" application. It shows a set of hardcoded scenarios which I can quickly go through and visually check that everything looks right.

It uses solid color rectangles as "windows", but otherwise this is the real niri layout code and real niri + Smithay rendering code, drawing to a GTK GL area.

For example, on the last test you can see that my offscreen code currently clips CSD shadows (during the open animation).

5 February at 11:43 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

visual tests are such a lifesaver, so glad I stole that idea from osu!lazer

7 February at 7:28 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

The window opening animation is now live as part of niri v0.1.2: github.com/YaLTeR/niri/release

I'm really looking forward to more animations, but wow they sure do need a lot of care to get right in all the edge cases.

Also, I added a way to programmatically invoke compositor actions, and turns out that's quite useful for making video demos!

#wayland #rust #smithay

17 February at 6:18 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

For a bit of fun I added gradient borders to niri. One of the visual tests for it turned out a bit mesmerizing to look at

Three terminals open with gradient-colored borders around.
22 February at 7:35 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Tagged niri v0.1.3: github.com/YaLTeR/niri/release

This one has much improved touchpad gestures with inertia, springs, rubberbanding and everything else I copied from libadwaita, my primary source for things that feel good :blobmiou:

Also thanks @alice for helping and giving feedback on the gestures and for giving a try to the touch support!

#wayland #rust #smithay

9 March at 11:22 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Just implemented something I've had in mind for a while: compositor-side blocking out of windows from screencasts! The compositor is the perfect place to do this since it can replace the window contents in the render tree, which will work fine with any kind of overlapping, transparency, etc. AND it will work with anything that records the screen through the portal, be it OBS or video meeting, or whatever.

Screenshot showing OBS and Secrets side-by-side, Secrets is visible on the screenshot itself, but inside the OBS video preview, it is a black rectangle.
24 March at 6:38 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

There's actually an important edge case here: if you open the screenshot UI while recording the monitor, then the screenshot UI preview will show the window, and OBS, recording the screenshot UI preview, will hence also show the window. There are trade-offs here for how you want this to work; for now I put a big warning around the option, and added a stricter mode that blocks out the window from ANY screen capture (which means you can't screenshot it).

24 March at 6:39 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

I think for the built-in screenshot UI this is solvable with one more layer of indirection (render the screenshot UI preview itself twice, once for screencasts, and once for the monitor). However, for third-party screenshot annotation tools, this will still be a problem.

24 March at 6:48 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Implemented this idea. It means rendering each monitor 3 times always for the screenshot but maybe it's fine? On this laptop 3 monitors × 3 renders takes 2 ms, and there's some unnecessary blocking I forgot to remove.

On the video, note how for me the screenshot UI has Secrets visible, but on the recording afterwards it's always blocked out.

24 March at 7:22 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

I may be having too much fun recording a demo for the release notes

Photo of a laptop with a sideways rotated webcam on a tripod in front of it.
30 March at 7:55 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Amidst all the fires being put out, niri 0.1.4 which can block out windows from screencasts! github.com/YaLTeR/niri/release

And also gamma control, focus follows mouse, warp mouse to focus, wheel and touchpad scroll bindings, xdp-gnome 46 support.

Also, every single config option is now documented on the wiki! Which took like an entire week of work (even though I was reusing a lot of my previously written docs in the config). Check it out here: github.com/YaLTeR/niri/wiki/Co

#wayland #smithay #rust #niri

Amidst all the fires being put out, niri 0.1.4 which can block out windows from screencasts! github.com/YaLTeR/niri/release

And also gamma control, focus follows mouse, warp mouse to focus, wheel and touchpad scroll bindings, xdp-gnome 46 support.

Also, every single config option is now documented on the wiki! Which took like an entire week of work (even though I was reusing a lot of my previously written docs in the config). Check it out here: github.com/YaLTeR/niri/wiki/Co

30 March at 11:26 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Today: horizontal column movement is now animated!

8 April at 16:05 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Took the whole yesterday and a bit of today, but I've got window closing animations working! These turned out to be tricky because they need storing a snapshot of the surface render tree to draw once the app is gone.

Some apps may start destroying their subsurfaces before the main surface, like alacritty with its sctk CSD, making it very easy to miss parts of the window in the snapshot, and therefore in the closing animation.

Also, windows closing to the left no longer shift the view!

#niri

10 April at 5:49 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Definitely one of the most complex animations yet: window resizing.

Just the crossfade effect itself took a while to get working with all the window geometries and buffer offsets, and then there's the whole multiple window orchestration with Wayland's asynchronous nature. (I don't do animation transactions yet, that'll be a whole other level of complexity on top.)

Happy with the result though, and it's cool that it seamlessly works with block-out-from screencast.

#niri

13 April at 12:01 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Window movement across columns is now animated too!

These weren't complex per se, but very *finicky*. Spent quite a bit of time chasing down all the offsets and coordinates to add and subtract to avoid jumps, but it seems to all work well now!

#niri

16 April at 7:12 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

All the animations, plus VRR, today in niri 0.1.5: github.com/YaLTeR/niri/release

I also remade the demo video to showcase the animations and some of the newer features!

#niri #smithay #rust #wayland

20 April at 15:52 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

We've reached 1000 commits 😅 with an a bit of an anticlimactic one though

Screenshot of GitHub UI showing that the main branch has 1000 commits with the last one being "Fix spelling mistake".
23 April at 7:39 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Another tricky feature, rounded corners! Took several days, but I believe I've got a pretty complete implementation.

You (manually) set the window corner radius and whether to force-clip the window. You can set radius per-corner to match GTK 3 apps. It works correctly with subsurfaces, blocked-out windows, transparency, gradient borders, resize and other animations.

Optimization-wise, opaque regions and even overlay plane unredirection work where possible!

#niri #smithay

Showing off a multitude of *corner cases* in niri.
Overlay plane unredirection works with rounded corners with clipping.
Opaque regions work with rounded corners.
4 May at 16:53 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Also, we've now got a little #niri setup showcase thread :blobcat: github.com/YaLTeR/niri/discuss

4 May at 16:54 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Added (stole from GNOME Shell as usual) a screen transition action, so now I can finally switch between dark and light in style

(of course, it works with blocked-out windows)

#niri

8 May at 5:59 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Okay, time for an actually useful feature: interactive mouse resizing (yes, finally). This was, as it goes, quite fiddly to implement, especially since niri has to negotiate with the window during the process.

I also added a double-resize-click (i.e. trigger a resize twice quickly) gesture to reset the window height or to toggle full width. Suggested by FreeFull on our Matrix and worked out very well! Really starting to feel quite nice with mouse.

(still no transactions yet)

#niri

11 May at 7:38 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

nvim really taking its time processing all this 1000 Hz worth of resizing lol

11 May at 7:41 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Since I'm in a mouse gesture mood today: hooked up the horizontal touchpad swipe to Mod + middle mouse drag and omg it feels so good with the spring deceleration and all

(of course it also correctly avoids the touchpad scaling, so that when using the mouse gesture, the cursor location is always exactly anchored to the view position)

#niri

11 May at 10:16 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Now for something fun. I'm experimenting with the ability to set custom shaders for animations. Today I added custom shader support for window-close, which lets me make this cool falling down animation!

This is entirely optional of course, and there's no performance impact if you don't use it. Also, custom shaders, like the rest of the niri config, are live-reloaded, making it easy to play around with them.

#niri

12 May at 6:19 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Been fixing quite a bit of interactive resize jank and other small stuff since the last time, but also added custom shader support for window-open, thus completing it for all three main window animations (open, close, resize).

Now I didn't actually have any good idea of what I might want in a window open custom shader (I like the default), so I made a simple expanding circle animation to showcase it.

#niri

15 May at 17:56 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Niri 0.1.6 with interactive window resizing, rounded corners, named workspaces, mouse view scrolling, animation custom shaders, screen transition!

github.com/YaLTeR/niri/release

Didn't realize quite how many release notes there would be this time; even had to use an extra level of headings. 😅

#niri #smithay #rust #wayland

Several windows in niri.
18 May at 11:53 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Over the past few weeks I've been working on fractional scaling for niri. A simple implementation took about a day, but to do it *properly* I had to refactor the entire layout code to work in floating-point.

The result is well worth it though. Borders, gaps and windows are always physical-pixel aligned, and not restricted to integer logical pixel positions. There's no blur or position-dependent +-1 px jank. Fractional-scale-aware clients remain crisp at any scale.

#niri #smithay

17 June at 11:42 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

So it turns out that changing PipeWire screencast stream resolution on the fly is actually not that hard! Which is great news because it's required (or at least very desirable) for implementing window screencasting.

21 June at 8:16 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Phew, finished the initial implementation of window screencasting in niri! Complete with stream resolution change on window resizing.

Some details are still iffy regarding frame timing and frame callbacks, especially to obscured windows, but it *should* work decently fine for now.

#niri

27 June at 9:08 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Icons are missing in the portal dialog because apparently Shell keeps track of Wayland app ID to .desktop file mapping internally and returns the .desktop file name to the portal for it to get the icon. Which is a bit too much effort for me to replicate for now. 😅

27 June at 9:09 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Fixed transparency support. Turns out the BGRA format should've been in a separate pod, rather than as a choice in the same pod. Should've looked at Mutter code sooner as usual..

28 June at 5:06 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

niri v0.1.7 is out with fractional scaling, window screencasts and many smaller improvements!

github.com/YaLTeR/niri/release

#niri #smithay #wayland #rust

29 June at 7:27 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Apparently there's a cool Pango flag that enables subpixel glyph positioning which makes things scale smoother and improves kerning! Thanks Benjamin (the GTK maintainer) for the suggestion

1 July at 5:42 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Oops, looks like niri had outstarred PaperWM on GitHub 🙈

PaperWM introduced me to (and made me fall in love with) scrollable tiling. It's a solid implementation on top of GNOME, so you get all the benefits of running a stable and well-supported DE (and Xwayland). PaperWM is also a very direct inspiration for many parts of niri!

github.com/paperwm/PaperWM

niri and PaperWM on GitHub sorted by star count
3 July at 4:42 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Implemented the thing where you can toggle the mouse pointer on the screenshot after the fact (by pressing P). Gonna add a help panel here soon to remind you of this.

#niri

7 July at 6:46 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

key repeat + scrollable tiling = fun

#niri

12 July at 16:47 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

One of the niri users has contributed a gradient interpolation color space setting! Now you can do pretty gradient borders in srgb-linear, oklab and oklch (in all four hue directions).

#niri

Alacritty with a rainbow border via an "oklch longer hue" gradient.
16 July at 7:59 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

I made a COPR for git builds of niri: copr.fedorainfracloud.org/copr

Apparently this is a thing you can do; relatively easily, even. It's fully automatic, triggers on a webhook from GitHub.

Thanks Michael (my4ng) from our Matrix channel for showing me the relevant docs and doing the initial work!

#niri

22 July at 11:41 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

niri has reached 3000 stars yesterday!

GitHub screenshot showing 3000 stars on the niri repo.
2 August at 14:35 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

also in an act of severe procrastination i decided to try drawing a diagram of the redraw state machine: github.com/YaLTeR/niri/wiki/Re

2 August at 14:36 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Spent a better part of today, but I've got dmabuf modifier negotiation fully working in my pipewire screencasting code in niri! This happens to finally fix screencasting on NVIDIA GPUs. Still haven't got any GStreamer pipeline working though, maybe needs a pipewire update.

Apparently, my AMD selects a BGRA format modifier that has two planes. Some out of band info I suppose. And on Intel a preferred BGRA modifier has three entire planes!

#niri #pipewire

6 August at 21:28 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

My Wayland compositor, niri, turns one today! :ablobcatrave:

Here's v0.1.8 with bind key repeat, screenshot UI pointer toggle, gradient color spaces, wlr screencopy v3 and output management, and lots of other improvements: github.com/YaLTeR/niri/release

#niri #smithay #wayland #rust

Niri showing a few terminals with an Oklch gradient border and inner without outer gaps.
10 August at 12:54 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

omg, my friend drew a birthday nirik :blobcataww:

i recorded a demo video for the focus-follows-mouse section to showcase it lol

10 August at 14:48 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Several days and a lot of hair pulling later, I *think* I got resize transactions working?? Maybe? Hopefully?

Resize transactions is when all windows that must resize together, resize together, with no mismatching frames in between. For example, all windows in a column must add up to the full screen height.

This requires correct configure acks on the client (looking at you, Blender) and very careful state update delaying and resize throttling on the compositor side.

#niri

20 August at 8:40 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

narrator: there was still one case where it didn't work due to a bug

okay, surely this time it definitely works for all correctly written clients

20 August at 11:20 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

Here's one mainly for people who disable animations: window closing now runs in a transaction with the other windows resizing. This means, no background flicker.

#niri

23 August at 14:02 | Open on mastodon.online
Ivan Molodetskikh replied to Ivan

There's been another logo discussion in the niri Matrix room with some quite interesting concepts emerging. Here's one by Endg4me_ with edits by bluelinden and myself, and inspiration from a concept by ElKowar.

What do you think?

#niri

Rotated "niri" text among strips of differently sized rectangles.
26 August at 13:08 | Open on mastodon.online
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