ratpoison

marte · 2008-02-29 17:25:27

i used xmonad for the past few months (the archlinux forum, was really helpfull! - i'm a lurker), but recently i felt tired with the auto-tiling stuff and spend some time just trying to make xmonad don't do it, messing with layouts (tabbed, combo, etc) and stuff. i just wanted windows maximized inside non-overlapping frames (each one containing more than one window) that i could create, remove and resize by hand.
so i'm trying ratpoison, and i'm liking it a lot. but...

1 - is there a way to make mplayer and feh "float"?
2 - i'm still quite confused with the way that new windows are placed, i mean, sometimes is like ratpoison choose the wrong frame to put the window. is there a way to move one window from one frame to another? (i don't want to swap frames, just transfer a window, since sometimes it's not created in the frame i want)

or, any advice about other wms??
before xmonad i was using awesome, and i'm thinking about trying ion3, and maybe a non-tiling-that-works-like-a-tiling wm (something like evilwm -- my first wm! -- or pekwm).

i'm quite glad with the ratpoison simplicity, with the not-automatic way it works, and the way configuration is done (i was tired of all the haskell stuff i didn't got time to learn), but question 1 is specially anoying to me.

thanks!

valnour · 2008-02-29 18:46:00

This might be a bit OT, but I've been playing with StumpWM a bit recently and it's a very neat idea. It''s made by ratposion's developers, but it's written in Lisp. It uses the idea of frames and groups, and is pretty fun to hack at. Maybe you should read the StumpWM wiki and see what you think about it.

dolby · 2008-02-29 19:03:50

a window manager is supposed to be small. stumpwm produces a 32mb binary. at least last i checked. on the contrary ratpoison is less that 1 mb iirc

valnour · 2008-02-29 20:19:21

You are correct, dolby, it does produce a very large binary, and as I am new to StumpWM I can not explain the reason for this. I was simply recommending it as an alternative, that seems to be what the OP wants. All of this is assuming that marte has a background in Lisp, if not, StumpWM might not be a good idea. I use dwm on a regular basis, and can recommend it to anyone. I feel that it supports everything that I need in a window manager, and is lightweight, small, and easily customized and tweaked. Moreover, the ideas that StumpWM implement are very neat, and I think deserve mentioning.

dolby · 2008-02-29 20:28:47

yes i agree. by the way i just noticed theres new stable releases of stumpwm available http://download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/stumpwm/

Sigi · 2008-02-29 20:34:30

marte wrote:

or, any advice about other wms??

Did you also try dwm? I like it a lot! It's easy to specify which apps you'd like to be started as floating, ie.e mplayer or the gimp - just add them to the list in config.h, the config-file for dwm. You can also change the size of apps in tiled mode by META-MB2, which changes the window into a floating one.

marte · 2008-02-29 20:39:58

thanks for the answers!

i almost tried out stumpwm before going to ratpoison, but hesitated because my lack of lisp knowledge + lack of time to learn it now, so i'm trying easier stuff.
after starting the thread i tried ion3, and seems that it does everything i want, but for some reason i was uncomfortable with it... maybe because the way the docs are written get me pissed, or because everything looks slower on it.
now i'm trying pekwm...

marte · 2008-02-29 20:42:10

@sigi: haven't tried dwm yet. reading the website it seems to do auto-tiling (they call it "dynamic tiling", i guess). is there a way to use frames and no auto-tiling with it?

Sigi · 2008-02-29 20:50:27

marte wrote:

@sigi: haven't tried dwm yet. reading the website it seems to do auto-tiling (they call it "dynamic tiling", i guess). is there a way to use frames and no auto-tiling with it?

Not really frames but dwm has some other nice features which let you use it in a similiar way.

One way (the one its intended to) is to use tags. You can tag each app with one or more tags and switch between the displayed tags. If you only use one tag per window this feels like switching between virtual desktops. You can easily move the windows from one "tag" to another, switch through the tags, etc.

An other idea would be to specify (in config.h) which apps to start with which tag. You could have a tag named www and start firefox in it, for example.

dwm can also be patched to have a monocle mode which lets you toggle between tiling and fullscreen mode.

I'm quite sure the are other ways to use dwm, too.

marte · 2008-02-29 21:24:35

i'm talking from dwm now, and i think that it uses the same strategy used by awesome (and a basic xmonad). what i'm interested now is the ratpoison approach, with the commands like vi's split and vsplit, and etc. i think i'll try to get used to ion, or pekwm, or just try to figure out how to make ratpoison works like i want it to.
but stumpwm seems very promising, and if i have the time i'll try it out when my connection returns, making me able to download a 2mb+ file =P

pauldonnelly · 2008-03-01 03:27:48

valnour wrote:

You are correct, dolby, it does produce a very large binary, and as I am new to StumpWM I can not explain the reason for this.

Because you've got all of SBCL or something built into it. Probably you could get something smaller with CLisp or GCL.

valnour · 2008-03-01 04:51:50

pauldonnelly: Thanks for clarifying that. After writing that post earlier, I found the information on the StumpWM wiki. It can be found here.

jbromley · 2008-03-01 06:15:20

I use ratpoison. I find to use ratpoison effectively you need to let go of some of your preconceived notions on how a wm should work. In particular, in ratpoison applications are not tied to frames. You make a frame set and then move the applications you need in and out of those frames. If you always want a given application to be in a given frame then probably ratpoison isn't right for you. Anyway, to respond to your questions.

1. Ratpoison should open new apps in the current frame (Ctrl+T F will show this.) The one exception is if the current frame is dedicated.

2. You can unmanage windows in ratpoison (read the man page on unmanage.) If you do this you will have to manage the position of unmanaged apps yourself using the -geometry flag of each application. Admittedly this will not work for applications like the GIMP, but it will work for mplayer and probably for feh.

You might want to try wmii.

Good luck,
j

marte · 2008-03-01 15:56:23

well, the verdict:

- dwm, awesome, xmonad, etc: they all divides the screen automatically ("dynamically"), and i'm not intersted in it right now. maybe i would be less bothered about if i used a big screen, or just used all the windows in fullscreen mode. but it's not the case. i really liked awesome (because the simple configuration file) and xmonad (err... because the complicated configuration file) while using it since sometime ago, and recommend they both. i guess that dwm and wmii are very nice too.
- ion3: it works like i want it to, but is anoying for some reason... i don't know, it just doesn't seem okay, bloated, or stupid-author, or something (i don't care too much about not being arch-linux-friendly). besides that, i'm not in the mood / with the time to dig the lua customization stuff.
- ratpoison: very fast and fantastic. but as jbromley said, probably isn't right for me. i guess that i could deal with the feh and mplayer issues (or unmanaging they or using some combinations of frame dumping and restoring), and there are scripts to move windows from one frame to another, but these are not the real thing. and i would like a little bit more of mouse support. anyway, i liked it a lot.
- stumpwm: didn't install it, but i'll try to keep a eye on. something for the future, perhaps.
- pekwm: too much for me.
- evilwm: the winner. at least it does almost nothing, and there's almost nothing that i can think about it, like happened with xmonad. feels strange coming back to it, a non tiled wm, but is the one that i plan using throught the next months. i guess that with time i can figure out some util keybindings with xbindkeys, and maybe use devilspie to make some windows born where i want it to. but for now, it's just okay. and configuring it was just adding one line to .xinitrc. i'll miss the feature of changing windows with directions (like on pekwm / ratpoison)...

i mostly agree with phrakture on this thread: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=43630
and more objective considerations about the theme (maybe something to even put on the wiki) on the first post of pauldonelly here: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=32231

thank you for the help
marte.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-02-29 17:25:27

ratpoison

#2 2008-02-29 18:46:00

Re: ratpoison

#3 2008-02-29 19:03:50

Re: ratpoison

#4 2008-02-29 20:19:21

Re: ratpoison

#5 2008-02-29 20:28:47

Re: ratpoison

#6 2008-02-29 20:34:30

Re: ratpoison

#7 2008-02-29 20:39:58

Re: ratpoison

#8 2008-02-29 20:42:10

Re: ratpoison

#9 2008-02-29 20:50:27

Re: ratpoison

#10 2008-02-29 21:24:35

Re: ratpoison

#11 2008-03-01 03:27:48

Re: ratpoison

#12 2008-03-01 04:51:50

Re: ratpoison

#13 2008-03-01 06:15:20

Re: ratpoison

#14 2008-03-01 15:56:23

Re: ratpoison

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