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[RP] Ratpoison improvements


From: Daniel Webb
Subject: [RP] Ratpoison improvements
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 15:44:03 -0600
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.11

Thanks for the startup script help Kevin.  Now that I see it, it makes sense
to put the program startup in .xinitrc and the bindings and such in
.ratpoisonrc.

Here are my observations as a new user:

  1) Groups should work like windows conceptually.  They should be named.  I
should be able to hit C-t g and get a groups menu just like C-t w gives me a
windows menu.  I should be able to hit C-t C-g and toggle to the previous
group like C-t C-t toggles to the previous window.

  2) Windows and groups should have offset of 1 instead of 0, because 0 is not
next to 1 on the keyboard.  For finger-memory logic, windows should go from 1
through 9.

  3) Groups should be selected with C-t C-? where ? is the group index.  The
function keys are not reachable without looking at the keyboard.  Also, this
makes sense because it is analogous to the C-t ? idiom for windows, just with
a modifier key.  Since groups are just meta-windows sort of.  Anyhow.

I have implemented all of those suggestions on my system.  Here are the
patches, released to the public domain.  Thanks for an awesome window manager,
guys.  The only serious criticism I have of it is that it doesn't have a good
out of the box configuration.  I propose mine. :)  Even if not mine, it should
be something a bit more full-featured that what it is now.

I altered rpws to:
  - have named groups
  - have a toggle feature
  - have a "return current group index" option

I added the "groups" script which is like the "windows" script except for
groups, with the exception that it doesn't show groups in the order used.  It
does preselect the current group though.

I altered the ratpoison sources to give new groups a 0 index but new windows a
1 index.  This way the "default" group gets 0 which isn't used, then workspace
groups are 1+.

I added bindings for "windows" and "groups" in my ratpoisonrc.

That's all I can think of.  With these changes, ratpoison is almost exectly
what I envisioned when I heard that "ratpoison is screen for X".  It is worthy
of sharing a system with screen, Vim, Emacs, and Mutt, unlike those other 
bloated
window managers.  It would be nice to be able to set up windows with defined
numbers at startup like screen, but it sounds like that may be difficult.

Attachment: ratpoison_windows_offset.diff
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Attachment: groups
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Attachment: rpws.diff
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