Re: [RP] multiple commands

[Mike Meyer]

Ben Leslie <address@hidden> types:
> On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, Mike Meyer wrote:
> > Ben Leslie <address@hidden> types:
> > bind e exec ratpoison -c focusleft -c "select emacs"
> > That works in the version in cvs; I'm not sure about the last release.
> Yup I'm on CVS, that works fine. Still a little bit icky having to start
> a ratpoison process from inside ratpoins, but I can live with that for
> now :>

I almost responsded to this point earlier in the keylaunch thread, so
you get it this time.

The cost of running a second ratpoison from inside of ratpoison is
minimal. The real overhead introduced in this case is the X resources
dance that ratpoison goes through to communicate with itself.

After all ratpoison is already loaded in memory and running. Any
reasonable OS should use that copy of the code. It should also use all
the data pages copy-on-write. Running a ratpoison is cheaper than
running some other tool to do the same thing.

This all applies to keylaunch as well. The real cost in using
keylaunch instead of bindings in ratpoison is the context switches
involved in passing resources back and forth. The only way I know of
to do things faster is to embed an interpreter into ratpoison, which
is the direction you were headed with your suggestion. After all, once
you allow sequenceing, why not allow conditional execution, after
which a goto is easy, right?

Might as well rewrite rp in Common Lisp.

        <mike
--
Mike Meyer <address@hidden>                     http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Q: How do you make the gods laugh?              A: Tell them your plans.