So the compositor chooses what surface to deliver events to based on its own desires (like letting pointer focus enter background apps) and the users input. I think there is a protocol (used by Xwayland?) to allow a client to get events from any window if the compositor/user allows it
Why would you ever let a non-focused application subscribe to any key combinations?
* Media playback controls
* Hotkeys to take screnshots, or record videos
* Quake style terminals
* Ingame chat and game invites
* Color pickers
* Screen controls like F.lux
* Window management hotkeys
* Push-to-Talk in group voice calls
And that's just what I personally use on my own machine.
It's a massive security issue that any installed software can listen to any input activity or view/affect other windows, and that does need to be reigned in. But to claim that there's no legitimate utility to global hotkeys is absurd. We need robust permissions, not a completely crippled experience.
* What key events I care about. (I.E. what the keybind should be named in the settings UI)
* What script or message to pass back to me when that event is activated.
* What the default keycombo should be, if any.
Providing a cli interface for automation or binding a hotkey is imo more powerful and useful but its not discoverable. Doubly so for a controlling it over dbus.
The logical thing is that since there is a substantial use case and a desire to limit applications access to global info is that a permission system ought to have been built into Wayland such that applications could request not only global access to the keyboard but permission to get a notification when a particular key press happened.
Since this feature was a staple of desktop operating systems for decades it ought to have been part of the plan from the start.
The current model where everything running can listen to everything you do is not acceptable, but that doesn't mean there's no usecases that strongly benefit from global hotkeys.
Looks to me like something the DE should manage for you, not the application.
But everyone seems to disagree with me!
The answer to both these questions is: an application. Think of applications hooking into global shortcuts as plugins for your DE.
> But everyone seems to disagree with me!
The original post you responded to was suggesting that your DE, or at least something outside of your application, provide an API to register specific global hotkeys that you can listen for. In response, you said:
> Why would you ever let a non-focused application subscribe to any key combinations?
So to me when reading this thread, it looks like you're the one disagreeing with this idea. This is the first post of yours I've seen where you suggest this, and the thread begins with you shooting down the entire concept as ridiculous.
Unless you're suggesting that the DE comes with a preconfigured set of global hotkeys and cannot be altered or extended, nor handled differently by different applications. In which case yes, I strongly disagree with that.
There's a reasonable middleground between a free-for-all and nothing but what the DE already thought of, and that's a well-defined API boundary alongside per-application, per-feature permissions. Bonus points if the DE handles all key-combination assignment in a consistent UI and applications can only register a suggested keycombo, a context for when the hotkey should be activated, and a function to respond to the event.
Yes that's what I'm suggesting. Works fine for almost all use-cases like on macOS.
I guess it's just not a popular opinion lol!
I'm not sure what your hangup here actually is.
> > Unless you're suggesting that the DE comes with a preconfigured set of global hotkeys and cannot be altered or extended
> Yes that's what I'm suggesting.
Okay, let's use the example of music playback. If your DE handles music playback controls, how does it tell the music player when to stop and start, or skip to next track?
Does it hardcode a list of music players, each of which provides its own bespoke API, and the DE calls into the application?
Or does it provide a way for any music player to call into the DE, and listen for those play/pause/skip events?
And if it does that, then why are the list of events hardcoded? Why not allow the music player to say "I also play podcasts, and I want to provide a hotkey to speed up/slow down the playback speed, or provide a separate hotkey to skip ahead 30 seconds that's distinct from skipping the entire episode."? Why not allow Discord to provide a push-to-talk hotkey so that people on a group call can actually hear each other without dogs barking and keys clacking and people coughing?
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Look at the VSCode Extension API for instance:
* Extensions are at least partially isolated from the main process and each other. I don't know how far this goes or how secure, but for our purposes they could be as isolated as you want.
* They can register a command which when activated, performs some action from within the extension.
* Those commands show up in the command list at the top of the screen when you hit "Control + Shift + P" (which is itself a command subject to all the same rules) and users can select whichever command they want to run.
* Those commands can also be assigned to a hotkey.
* Extensions can suggest a default binding for this hotkey, but users can go into the VSCode settings page and assign whatever keycombo they desire.
* Users can remove keybindings for commands that have them by default.
* Users can assign keybindings to commands that don't have them by default.
* All keybind editing is performed through the same UI, which is owned by VSCode and not the extension.
* VSCode itself is the thing listening to those key events, and it calls into the extension to activate it.
* There is a concept of context for when these keybinds apply, such as when a markdown document is active in the editor. Extensions provide these contexts by default and users can override them as they choose.
* Extensions themselves don't even start up until an activation event is met. These can be opening a file of a certain language, running a command, etc...
What about this model is objectionable in your mind? Who benefits from the lockdown you propose where no new ideas can be tried until the DE authority deigns to allow it?
This problem has been solved in the DEs for quite some time now, global hotkeys is probably the very last thing you want to reach for, when all other options are exhausted.
And when that happens, I don't know about other DEs, but the way you're describing with extensions is mostly how GNOME Wayland already works. If you want to intercept a key, you ship an extension for that, and display a UI to rebind the keys, or you can place additional entries in the system's keyboard settings panel. What you can't do is have random unprivileged processes intercept keys without the user's permission.
It sort of works in the mobile space (+/- accessibility services, which are the way to get that functionality if you need it), but that's only because mobile devices are consumption-oriented; there's only so much you can do with them, and they eschew utility in order to streamline you into being monetized by third-party services.
There is also more to this, showing the Wayland security model is incoherent. If debugging is enabled on your system I can simply debug your root terminal and start injecting commands into memory.
In Wayland the situation is also not so much different from Windows, you would just reconfigure and extend the DE itself. You are already relying on them to provide most of the UI to an extent.
For your latter point, Wayland is much different. In Windows there are ways to inject behavior into other programs or the UI elements. This exists so you can change the UI. Wayland's idea of security is very much against that, at least in the way it can be done on Windows/X11.
Input injection is being worked on in a different library, that brings a standard API that's supposed to work the same across Wayland, X11, and with sandboxed contexts: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libei
I know this is a rare use case, but the DE and the app need to work togheter to allow global shortcuts. I for example have a keyboard with many useless media keys , that I configured to run some specific scripts and some I could very easy set them up as Global shortcuts for some KDE apps. Not sure if other DEs would offer to setup global shortcuts for you.
Probably something most users will use is screen recordings and screen readers , this applications need to have global shortcuts(and access to the screen and window elements)
My success rate for finishing Hyper Hexagonest[1] is falling; being able to inspect recent attempts might reveal where my timing is drifting.
(it's only ~25%-ish finished, unfortunately)
Alternative shortcut managers might also run into trouble (say, clipboard managers with customizable shortcuts) although those could work with a simple permission prompt for each new shortcut. Very annoying and obtrusive to the user, but the security principles remain.
There are also tools that extend some window managers with i3-like shortcuts and configurations; the config files are parsed on the fly and they need to work in the background.
Then there's tools like AutoHotkey that can be great tools for productivity through scripting and custom shortcuts. A lot of AH's functionality can be replicated using the standard hotkey API, but not everything.
There's also diagnostic tools (see Windows Steps Recorder) that record all keystrokes and generate a step by step report about what happened with screenshots as a guide.
IMO global key capture should still be possible with the right capabilities set because there are valid use cases for it. Requiring additional permissions is fine IMO, but completely removing the option to do this is a pain.
Example: I've bound several scenes in OBS to keyboard shortcuts so that I can switch scenes no matter what application I'm in. I'm pretty sure OBS does this by listening to all keyboard events on the root window. It's not very efficient, but it works.
Now imagine having to support a global shortcut daemon per DE that exists. I suppose someone would write an abstraction but really, it's something that FreeDesktop.org should provide (if it already doesn't).