[RP] Ratpoison Under Gnome

[Ross Patterson]

I just wrote a blog post about my current best solution to integrating
Gnome and Ratpoison: http://rpatterson.net/blog/ratpoison-under-gnome

As a keyboard junkie, I've been using and loving `ratpoison
<http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/>`_ for many years now.  Many
ratpoison users use ratpoison as a part of ditching a desktop manager,
such as Gnome, altogether.  For my part, however, I want the desktop
integration: notifications, volume management, and using software
whose only exposed interface is through the system tray.  My interest
in ratpoison is driving the 99% of my computer usage which is
application interaction.  In those cases I want to be able to
completely ignore the desktop knowing I can use it smoothly for that
1% of the time I want it.

Over my years of using ratpoison, I've resorted to some truly horrific
hacks to try and approximate this goal.  I've tried stalonetray and
trayer.  I've written ugly wrapper scripts that waited a while before
killing metacity and starting ratpoison.  I couldn't figure why I
couldn't just let gnome-panel and nautilus (in the case of Ubuntu
Desktop) or netbook-launcher-efl (in the case of Ubuntu Netbook) live
in peace alongside ratpoison.  Finally, I decided to dig into how
Gnome does session startup and to try to get at the root of it.

The first hurdle was getting Gnome to use ratpoison as it's window
manager.  Gnome consults the
/desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager gconf key to
decide what window manager to use.  In the case of Ubuntu Netbook
Edition 2D, you can't set this gconf key without first unlocking it
since UNE locks down a bunch of configurability.  So the first order
of business under UNE is to unlock the key.  As root, edit
/var/lib/gconf/une-efl.mandatory/%gconf-tree.xml and remove the
"<entry name="windowmanager"..." under the same path for the key in
the XML <dir> elements, it's towards the top.

Next we have to tell Gnome to accept ratpoison as a provider of the
"windowmanager" required component.  To do this, as root, copy
/usr/share/applications/metacity.desktop to
/usr/share/applications/ratpoison.desktop and in the new file replace,
case insensitive, all occurrences of "metacity" with "ratpoison".

At this point you must log out and log back in so gdm will restart and
gconf will see the changes.  Now you can, as your normal user, set the
key to ratpoison using gconf-editor or the following command line::

    $ gconftool-2 --type string --set 
/desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager ratpoison

Now that Gnome will use ratpoison as it's window manager, we need to
tell ratpoison to leave gnome-panel and nautilus/netbook-launcher-efl
(Gnome/UNE 2D) windows alone.  Tell ratpoison not to manage those
windows by adding the following to your normal user's ~/.ratpoisonrc::

    unmanage Top Expanded Edge Panel
    unmanage Bottom Expanded Edge Panel
    unmanage Netbook Launcher EFL
    unmanage Netbook Launcher
    unmanage x-nautilus-desktop

Now we get into the part where somewhat less ugly hacks than my
previous solutions, but still ugly hacks are required.  Firstly, the
gnome-panel and nautilus/netbook-launcher-efl (Gnome/UNE 2D) windows
need to be opened *after* ratpoison has already fired up.  Otherwise,
ratpoison mangles the windows.  Secondly, we need to make sure
gnome-panel starts up *last* so that it will appear on top of the
unmanaged windows.  Gnome has discussed setting up startup
dependencies, which is the right solution to this, but it's not there
yet at least as far as I could tell.

Without such dependencies, the hacks required are so ugly, I suggest
using gnome-session-properties ("Startup Applicatons" in the Gnome
Sytem Preferences menu) instead of ~/.ratpoisonrc to do your
app startup to solve the first problem.  If ratpoison isn't opening
your apps, it starts up lightning fast when set as the gnome window
manager and window mangling isn't an issue at least for me.

The second issue, getting gnome-panel to startup after
nautilus/netbook-launcher-efl, still requires an ugly hack, at least
as far as I could tell.  Make sure ~/bin is on your normal user's
PATH, the default in recent Ubuntus at least.  Then add a wrapper
around gnome-panel so that it waits for nautilus/netbook-launcher-efl
to start before it does by adding an executable ~/bin/gnome-panel with
the following contents::

    #! /bin/bash
    set -x
    IFS='
    '
    
    command=${0##*/}
    
    # Find the next path for command
    for path in $( which -a $command )
    do
        if [ $next ]
        then
            break
        elif [ $path == $0 ]
        then
            next=1
        fi
    done
    
    # Determine command dependencies
    case $DESKTOP_SESSION in
        gnome)
            depends_name="nautilus"
            ;;
        une-efl)
            depends_name="netbook-launcher-efl"
            ;;
        *)
            exec $path "$@"
            ;;
    esac
    
    # Wait for the dependency to start
    while [ 1 ]
    do
        # check for the process, if present continue
        ps -C "$depends_name" -o pid,user | grep $USER && break || sleep 1
    done
    
    # pause for window initialization
    sleep 1
    
    # Start the real command
    exec $path "$@"

Now you should be able to log out of Gnome and back in, ratpoison will
startup and tell you so immediately.  Sometime later,
nautilus/netbook-launcher-efl and gnome-panel will startup as
unmanaged windows and your gnome-session startup apps will open.  The
windows ratpoison doesn't manage can be seen by clearing all the
ratpoison manged windows with "C-t -".  IOW, when using ratpoison
under gnome, "C-t -" is equivalent to switching to the desktop.

This all only works under Ubuntu Netbook Edition 2D, since under 3D it
appears everything, gnome-panel, the launcher, *everything* is
actually all pulled into the mutter window manager used by unity.  I
think this is fine since I don't see much point in using ratpoison
under unity.  Under the 2D version of UNE, however, it works
beautifully.

The one hitch I've found is that since the Gnome desktop windows are
not managed by ratpoison, many completed actions, such as completing a
dialog, will return you back to the previous ratpoison managed
window.  Most of the time, this is actually best for keyboard junkies
since we tend to want to have as little to do with the desktop
interface as possible.  It can be annoying, however, when you have
multiple interactions to have with the desktop in a row since you have
to keep doing "C-t -" after each operation to get back to the desktop.

Since I was figuring this out as I went, I didn't do this setup in
this on a clean install, so there may be some hitches.  Sign in via
openid and comment if you run into problems and I'll try to cleanup
the procedure for anyone else.

Ross