Ideas for screen ruler on Wayland

thekingofravens · 12-08-2021, 12:10 AM

I am thinking of writing a program which behaves similarly to https://github.com/bluegrams/ScreenRuler, but works natively in Linux. However, my understanding of Wayland is that only the compositor itself could perform such an action.

Is there a way that software could interact with the entire screen in Wayland in a way that works across different compositors (GNOME, KDE, etc)? Or am I correct that a code would have to be written for each compositor it interacted with?

pan64 · 12-08-2021, 01:11 AM

Hi, and welcome here, at LQ,

for ubuntu there is a package named screenruler and I guess that is already available for other distros too. Is this what you are looking for?

thekingofravens · 12-08-2021, 01:36 AM

I think that is the old gnome-screenruler project: https://gnomecoder.wordpress.com/screenruler/

However this doesn't seem any better than Kruler. Both really just don't look good to me and I want to try and make a better one, something with the polish of a modern gnome application. My main goal was trying to figure out what is involved in drawing over the entire screen in Wayland. I was wondering if there is a simple way to achieve that.