Re: [RP] At long last: success with ratpoison

[John Meacham]

On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 10:18:00PM -0800, Shawn Betts wrote:
> Ryan Yeske <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > twb <address@hidden> writes:
> > 
> > > Quoth Albert Meier <address@hidden> on or about Sat, 01 Nov 2003 11:28:40 
> > > +0100:
> > > > square. So the magic combination for me is C-a and not C-t (The reason 
> > > > being 
> > > > an entry /etc/ratpoisonrc).
> > > > I can only guess at why the gentoo developers put it in there: to avoid 
> > > 
> > > screen(1) compatibility.
> > 
> > Yes.  That's almost certainly why.
> > 
> > IIRC, I argued early on (like ratpoison 0.0.2 days or something) that
> > C-a should be the default out of the box, for the same reason
> > (screen(1) compat), and Shawn disagreed, and that was that :).  I
> > still believe, at some level that C-a should be, or should have been
> > the default, but its definitely too late now, I think.
> 
> I offer an argument against using C-a as the default because screen
> uses C-a as a default. It seems a number of users use ratpoison and
> screen at the same time. They boot ratpoison, open a terminal and
> connect to their screen session. If rp used C-a as the default then a
> default setup would make it difficult to control screen. Imagine
> trying to get a C-a key in emacs inside the screen session: C-a a a. 
> 
> From that angle, rp should have a different default prefix so that it
> is screen compatible :).

yeah, using the same keybindings as screen seems like a bad idea,
ratpoison is not a replacement for screen, it does not do everything
screen does (and vice versa). pretending it is the same seems confusing
and innapropriate. Things should only be conflictingly compatable  with
programs for which they subsume the capabilites of. The argument has
also been made that ratpoison should switch it's default binding to
something that terminal apps can't use. there are scarcely few keys
which tty apps can reliably count on being available, ratpoison being an
X app is not under the same constraints.  'ctrl-m' would be my
recommendation. 
        John

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John Meacham - California Institute of Technology, Alum. - address@hidden
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