Add support for mouse movement events through Sway IPC

[Zai-Kun]

This patch lets you track your cursor's position through Sway ipc. You can subscribe to the 'cursor_movement' event and listen to cursor movements as they happen.
Checkout the demo on this reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/swaywm/comments/1i7zu4u/a_sway_patch_that_lets_you_listen_for_mouse/

[emersion]

Thanks for the patch! However, I'm not sure the Sway IPC is a good way to implement this. The Sway IPC is mostly for low-volume, low-frequency data. Wayland is better suited for relaying stuff such as input events.

Can you tell more about your use-case? Why do you need the cursor position?

[poach3r]

Thanks for the patch! However, I'm not sure the Sway IPC is a good way to implement this. The Sway IPC is mostly for low-volume, low-frequency data. Wayland is better suited for relaying stuff such as input events.

Can you tell more about your use-case? Why do you need the cursor position?

Having access to cursor position gives users the ability to create mouse position dependent programs such as global menus in a similar vein to Windows 11, Awesome, Openbox, etc. This is my primary use case, however I can imagine it being used for adding other features such as hot corners.

[kennylevinsen]

What aspect of this "global menu" requires global mouse tracking? I cannot off the top of my head think of a menu in Windows, Awesome or Openbox that requires global, focus free mouse tracking.

[poach3r]

By "global menu" I mean a menu which appears at the position of your mouse when right clicking on your desktop which gives you various options. This includes one in Openbox.

[kennylevinsen]

Context menus on right click on the background can already be implemented using wlr_layer_shell to make a fullscreen background surface. That surface will have regular mouse focus behavior and can observe right clicks on it, and in turn give you a surface to actually attach the context menu popups to.

[Zai-Kun]

Wayland is better suited for relaying stuff such as input events.

But, there is no inbuilt way to achieve this in wayland as far as I know. You can get the current mouse position through wlr-layer-shell protocol however, you can't "track" your mouse as it moves around without taking the focus which is not what I want for my use case. I've tried several things but nothing worked so I decided to make this patch in the end.

Can you tell more about your use-case? Why do you need the cursor position?

I wanted to create a tool that would generate heat maps of your mouse movements and a "desktop mate" like oneko that followed your cursor around (using wlr-layer-shell to display it).