libei/doc/protocol/_index.md

title	draft	archetype	alwaysopen
EI Protocol documentation	false	home	true

libei is a library for Emulated Input, primarily aimed at the Wayland stack. It uses a typical client/server separation, with the two parts connected via a UNIX socket. In libei parlance, the client-side is called "EI client", the server side, typically a Wayland compositor, is called the "EIS Implementation" (Emulated Input Server). These terms are used throughout this documentation.

This documentation details the protocol to communicate between the client side and the EIS implementation.

A typical setup using the [C libraries]({{< ref "libraries" >}}) looks like this:

{{< mermaid >}} graph LR; libwayland-server --> c1 libwayland-server --> c2 /dev/input/event0 ---> libinput libeis-- ei protocol ---libei subgraph Wayland Compositor libwayland-server libinput libeis end subgraph Wayland client A libei c1[libwayland-client] end subgraph Wayland client B c2[libwayland-client] end {{< /mermaid >}}

The ei protocol is a public protocol that may be used directly by clients or EIS implementations. This documentation describes the protocol, its interfaces and how to generate language bindings.

{{% notice style="warning" %}} The protocol is not yet declared stable. {{% /notice %}}

If you are looking for easy-to-use C libraries instead, see:

• 🥚 libei for the client side
• 🍦 libeis for the EIS implementation side
• 🚌 liboeffis is an helper library for DBus communication with the XDG RemoteDesktop portal (liboeffis)

Documentation

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