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louic

Member

Registered: 2013-06-13

Posts: 15

Switching to Wayland + Sway: two issues

I am now using i3 on X, and have tried Sway on Wayland. I really like it except for two issues that prevent me from switching for daily work:

1. Automatic screen switching using my laptop Fn+F7. I am happy to write a script and bind a key (as I did for X with xrandr) but I do not know how to change the screen outputs and resolutions on-the-fly in Wayland / sway.

2. A nicely configured terminal (xterm, urxvt, st or equivalent, with my own fonts and colors), am familiar with .Xresources but that has an X in it. What is the equivalent for Wayland / i3?

rdeckard

Wiki Maintainer

Registered: 2015-01-28

Posts: 137

Re: Switching to Wayland + Sway: two issues

I am now using i3 on X, and have tried Sway on Wayland. I really like it except for two issues that prevent me from switching for daily work:

1. Automatic screen switching using my laptop Fn+F7. I am happy to write a script and bind a key (as I did for X with xrandr) but I do not know how to change the screen outputs and resolutions on-the-fly in Wayland / sway.

Use the "output" setting provided by sway. It's in sway's FAQ online and in the manpage.

2. A nicely configured terminal (xterm, urxvt, st or equivalent, with my own fonts and colors), am familiar with .Xresources but that has an X in it. What is the equivalent for Wayland / i3?

Terminals that don't depend on X (like GNOME terminal) have their own settings for fonts and colors. If you use xterm in Wayland, it will use XWayland and read your .Xresources I believe. It would be best if you try changing settings with a terminal you like and then report back if that fails.

louic

Member

Registered: 2013-06-13

Posts: 15

Re: Switching to Wayland + Sway: two issues

Thank you for your answer.

Use the "output" setting provided by sway. It's in sway's FAQ online and in the manpage.

Well, not exactly unless I misunderstood something. I can set output in the config file, but I want to change it with a keypress.

Terminals that don't depend on X (like GNOME terminal) have their own settings for fonts and colors. If you use xterm in Wayland, it will use XWayland and read your .Xresources I believe. It would be best if you try changing settings with a terminal you like and then report back if that fails.

This did not work for me. Both xterm and urxvt do not use the font I chose in .Xresources and revert to a default. After manually executing xrdb ~/.Xresources everything is fine, so the question becomes how to do this without .xinitrc?

Last edited by louic (2017-02-25 14:51:21)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,529

Website

Re: Switching to Wayland + Sway: two issues

For urxvt you can use ~/.Xdefaults instead as urxvt reads that file itself on startup.

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"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

rdeckard

Wiki Maintainer

Registered: 2015-01-28

Posts: 137

Re: Switching to Wayland + Sway: two issues

I just realized I had the following line in my sway configuration:

exec xrdb ~/.Xresources

and that seemed to apply to all X applications in sway.

louic

Member

Registered: 2013-06-13

Posts: 15

Re: Switching to Wayland + Sway: two issues

Yes, that helped. Thanks.