Zayin/Classroom_Desktop

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ekklesiaandClaude Opus 5 8bed3d186a feat: scale the whole session, not just the classroom's own windows

UI_SCALE only ever reached the surfaces we draw ourselves. Chrome stayed
tiny — its tabs, omnibox and menus are Chrome's own pixels, and Ctrl+
only scales page content, which is no use to a volunteer reading a
toolbar from across the room.

UI_SCALE is a property of the television, not of one program, so it now
sets sway's output scale, which every client is measured against.
classroom-scale runs first in the session and applies it. The display
mode is untouched: the panel stays at 1920x1080 and only the logical
coordinate space shrinks, which is what makes everything in it larger.

Our own surfaces stop scaling themselves. They are measured in the same
logical pixels sway is already scaling, so applying UI_SCALE again would
double it. SHELL_SCALE is that decision in one named place, and setting
it back to ui_scale(config) would restore per-surface scaling without
touching a template.

Measured at 1920x1080 with Chrome 152. Chrome's tab strip 40 -> 49 ->
59px against 1.0, 1.25, 1.5; sway's title bar 25 -> 31 -> 38px; the
classroom dock 74 -> 92 -> 110px. Everything scales once, together, and
1.0 is identical to no scaling at all.

Two tradeoffs, both measured rather than assumed. GTK 3 has no
fractional scaling, so at 1.5 it renders at 2x and sway scales down —
very slightly softer, invisible at classroom distance. XWayland is
softer too: terminal text at 1.5 showed about 50% more intermediate-tone
pixels than at 1.0. VLC is the only XWayland application here, and in
DVD mode none of its interface is on screen, only video from a 720x480
disc that is being upscaled regardless. Chrome is a native Wayland
client and stays sharp, which is what matters for reading.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>

2026-09-04 23:17:37 -05:00

7.1 KiB

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Classroom test checklist

Run against the exact artifact published to canary, on the real endpoint, before promoting to stable with ./update_stable.sh.

Boot

Cold boot reaches the classroom shell with no terminal or window junk
Reboot does the same
Wallpaper appears
Dock appears, centred
Clock appears, bottom right

Provisioning

journalctl -u ekklesia-classroom-provision shows a clean run
Google Chrome is installed on a machine that never had it
A second boot does not reinstall anything
A machine with no network still boots to a working shell, and provisioning succeeds at a later boot once it is online

UI scale

UI_SCALE sets sway's output scale, so it scales the whole session. Change it, then sudo systemctl restart getty@tty1.

UI_SCALE=1.0 is identical to a session with no scaling
swaymsg -t get_outputs shows the mode still 1920x1080 at every scale, with only the logical size changing
At 1.25 and 1.5, Chrome grows: tabs, omnibox, toolbar icons, menus and page content
Chrome's buttons are still easy to hit with the mouse
Dock, clock, notifications and the DVD bar grow by the same amount — once, not twice
UI_SCALE=0.8 shrinks everything together
A nonsense value (UI_SCALE=banana) still gives a working shell
An extreme value (UI_SCALE=9) is clamped, not obeyed
journalctl or the sway log shows classroom-scale: session scale N

Reserved bottom shell (regression)

The bottom strip is one full-width layer-shell surface with a 76px exclusive zone. Dock and clock live inside it. Do not split them back into separate layer-shell windows.

A maximised Chrome window stops above the bottom strip
The clock does not float over Chrome
Dock stays centred, clock stays bottom right
Wallpaper shows through the unused parts of the strip
Every dock button still responds to clicks
A fullscreen application covers the whole display, dock included

Browser

First Browser click launches Chrome
Chrome opens on Wonder Ink (https://app.wonderink.org/)
Clicking Browser while Chrome is focused minimises it
Clicking Browser again restores it maximised, not floating or draggable
Clicking Browser while Chrome is running but unfocused focuses it
Super+M minimises the focused window
Super+Shift+M restores the most recently minimised window
Normal navigation to any other site works
The Home button returns to Wonder Ink
Fullscreen YouTube video uses the whole display
Leaving fullscreen restores the correct geometry above the dock
No first-run, default-browser or sign-in nag appears
chrome://policy lists the Ekklesia policies as applied, with no "unknown policy" entries
Chrome does not start by itself at boot
After a reboot, cookies and site logins are still there
After an OTA update, cookies and site logins are still there

Known limitation: Chrome's own minimise button in its title bar does nothing. Sway ignores the Wayland minimise request and gives no event to hook. Minimising is the dock's Browser button or Super+M.

Notifications

classroom-notify-test renders with the classroom styling: dark translucent, rounded, white text, top right
classroom-notify-test --critical "Parent Call" "Room 3 needs a parent." renders in the critical style and does not time out
Notifications appear over a fullscreen video

Over SSH from an administrator account, run it with sudo:

sudo classroom-notify-test --dry-run   # show the session it resolved
sudo classroom-notify-test             # send into the classroom desktop

The classroom desktop belongs to the classroom user, and mako sits on that user's D-Bus session. A plain notify-send from an SSH session lands in the administrator's own session, where nothing owns org.freedesktop.Notifications, so D-Bus tries to start a second mako with no display and the call times out with NoReply. The script finds the running sway process for the classroom user and delivers into its session instead. It never starts mako.

sudo classroom-notify-test from an SSH session displays on the classroom screen
sudo classroom-notify-test --dry-run reports the resolved XDG_RUNTIME_DIR, bus address and Wayland display
Running it as an unprivileged admin account explains it needs sudo
tests/test-classroom-notify-test.sh passes (also run by the build)

DVD

With DVD_ENABLED=false:

No DVD button in the dock

With DVD_ENABLED=true:

Drive unplugged: button present, icon held back, friendly notification on click
Drive present, no disc: friendly notification on click, nothing crashes
Inserting a disc produces one DVD Ready notification
The DVD icon comes up to full strength while a disc is in
Nothing plays until the button is pressed
Clicking plays the disc
Menus work
Audio works
Chapter navigation works
Fullscreen works
Super+M minimises the player, the DVD button restores it
Closing the player works
Ejecting is detected, the icon goes back
Reinserting is detected again
Commercial CSS disc plays without anyone having run codec setup by hand

DVD mode

Pressing DVD covers the whole display immediately, dock and clock included — no wallpaper visible anywhere, at any point
A spinner and "Loading DVD…" show while the disc spins up
No partial VLC window is ever visible against the wallpaper
The loading surface stays up until the disc menu is actually showing — VLC's tiled black startup window is never visible
Video or the disc menu replaces the loading surface when ready
A disc that never opens still gives the desktop back (20s)
No VLC chrome anywhere: no menu bar, no fullscreen controller, no cone, no sway title bar
Wallpaper is never visible around VLC
Moving the mouse to the bottom slides the classroom bar up
It hides again shortly after the mouse leaves it
While hidden, clicking a disc menu item near the bottom still reaches the menu
Play/pause toggles and the icon follows the actual state
Previous and next chapter work
The menu button returns to the disc menu
Space pauses; arrow keys and Enter navigate the disc menu
Arrow keys do not change volume, and no key reaches crop, aspect ratio, subtitles, audio tracks or deinterlacing
Esc leaves DVD mode cleanly, with no black window left behind
Close leaves DVD mode cleanly
Eject leaves DVD mode and opens the tray
Killing VLC by hand also returns to the classroom desktop
Pressing DVD twice quickly does not start two sessions
The bar is sized by UI_SCALE like the dock

OTA

./update_canary.sh publishes package first, manifest last
The endpoint on the canary channel picks the update up
SHA-256 verification passes
Install succeeds and the endpoint reboots
Everything above still works after the update