doc/publican/sources/Compositors.xml

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<chapter id="chap-Compositors">
  <title>Types of Compositors</title>

  <para>
    Compositors come in different types, depending on which
    role they play in the overall architecture of the OS.
    For instance, a
    <link linkend="sect-Compositors-System-Compositor">system compositor</link>
    can be used for booting the system, handling multiple user switching, a
    possible console terminal emulator and so forth. A different compositor, a
    <link linkend="sect-Compositors-Session-Compositor">session compositor</link>
    would provide the actual desktop environment. There are many ways for
    different types of compositors to co-exist.
  </para>
  <para>
    In this section, we introduce three types of Wayland compositors relying
    on <link linkend="sect-Library-Server">libwayland-server</link>.
  </para>

  <section id="sect-Compositors-System-Compositor">
    <title>System Compositor</title>
    <para>
      A system compositor can run from early boot until shutdown.
      It effectively replaces the kernel vt system, and can tie in
      with the systems graphical boot setup and multiseat support.
    </para>
    <para>
      A system compositor can host different types of session
      compositors, and let us switch between multiple sessions
      (fast user switching, or secure/personal desktop switching).
    </para>
    <para>
      A linux implementation of a system compositor will typically
      use libudev, egl, kms, evdev and cairo.
    </para>
    <para>
      For fullscreen clients, the system compositor can reprogram the
      video scanout address to read directly from the client provided
      buffer.
    </para>
  </section>
  <section id="sect-Compositors-Session-Compositor">
    <title>Session Compositor</title>
    <para>
      A session compositor is responsible for a single user session.
      If a system compositor is present, the session compositor will
      run nested under the system compositor. Nesting is feasible because
      the protocol is asynchronous; roundtrips would be too expensive
      when nesting is involved. If no system compositor is present, a
      session compositor can run directly on the hw.
     </para>
     <para>
      X applications can continue working under a session compositor
      by means of a root-less X server that is activated on demand.
     </para>
    <para>
       Possible examples for session compositors include
      <itemizedlist>
        <listitem>
          <para>
	    gnome-shell
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    moblin
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    kwin
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    kmscon
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    rdp session
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    Weston with X11 or Wayland backend is a session compositor nested
	    in another session compositor.
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    fullscreen X session under Wayland
	  </para>
	</listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
    </para>
  </section>
  <section id="sect-Compositors-Embedding-Compositor">
    <title>Embedding Compositor</title>
    <para>
      X11 lets clients embed windows from other clients, or lets clients
      copy pixmap contents rendered by another client into their window.
      This is often used for applets in a panel, browser plugins and similar.
      Wayland doesn't directly allow this, but clients can communicate GEM
      buffer names out-of-band, for example, using D-Bus, or command line
      arguments when the panel launches the applet.  Another option is to
      use a nested Wayland instance.  For this, the Wayland server will have
      to be a library that the host application links to.  The host
      application will then pass the Wayland server socket name to the
      embedded application, and will need to implement the Wayland
      compositor interface.  The host application composites the client
      surfaces as part of it's window, that is, in the web page or in the
      panel.  The benefit of nesting the Wayland server is that it provides
      the requests the embedded client needs to inform the host about buffer
      updates and a mechanism for forwarding input events from the host
      application.
    </para>
    <para>
      An example for this kind of setup is firefox embedding the flash
      player as a kind of special-purpose compositor.
    </para>
  </section>
</chapter>