Ratpoison
Ratpoison is a minimalistic window manager which can be controlled 100% through keyboard. It behaves like the terminal-multiplexer GNU screen. Every window is maximized to fit the whole screen, no pixel is wasted on stuff like borders or other decoration. The user can also "split" the screen into two or more frames in order to display more than one window at the time. For more information check the official homepage at http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/
Contents
1 Installation
Ratpoison is part of the 'extra' repository. So a simple
pacman -S ratpoison
should do the trick.
2 Configuration
To use ratpoison as your windowmanager, you have to create/edit the file ~/.xinitrc.
Example .xinitrc:
# the black/white grid as background doesn't suit my taste. xsetroot -solid black # ratpoison is compatible with xcompmgr! now you can have real transparency xcompmgr -c -f -D 5 & #fire up ratpoison! exec /usr/bin/ratpoison
3 Using Ratpoison
After X11 starts up you will see a black screen and a little textbox on the upper right of it that says "Welcome to Ratpoison" :) Now type CTRL+t and then '?' to get a list of keybindings. If you are used to GNU screen, you will feel at home very soon.
You are able to define custom keystrokes and even override existing ones in ~/.ratpoisonrc
Example:
# overriding CTRL+t 'c' to start aterm instead of xterm bind c exec aterm
bind f exec icecat
So, if you type CTRL+t and then 'f', ratpoison will fire up icecat.
Here is another .ratpoisonrc i'm using on my Computers:
exec xsetroot -cursor_name left_ptr startup_message off escape C-z # make a screenshot alias sshot exec import -window root ~/screenshot-`date +%F`.jpg definekey top M-C-Print sshot #virtual desks gnewbg one gnewbg two definekey top M-l exec ratpoison -c "select -" -c "gprev" -c "next" definekey top M-h exec ratpoison -c "select -" -c "gnext" -c "next" #switch between windows definekey top M-j next definekey top M-k prev #apps unbind c bind c exec urxvt -tr #bind c exec aterm bind g exec gftp bind f exec icecat
4 Tips
4.1 Multiple workspaces
By default, ratpoison only has one workspace, but using a script called rpws (installed by default) you can have more.
Just edit your .ratpoisonrc, and add:
~/.ratpoisonrc
exec rpws -i exec /usr/bin/rpws init 6 -k
That creates 6 workspaces. By default, you can access to them by using alt-f1 to access the first, alt-f2 to access the second, etc.
You can also add binds to them, like this:
bind C-1 exec rpws 1 bind C-2 exec rpws 2 ...
That allows to access them with Ctrl-t Ctrl-1 (assuming ctrl-t as your escape key)
4.2 urxvt and xterm
Urxvt and xterm would not resize to a fixed number of pixels. Instead, it resize itself to multiples of its font's size, therefore, chances that there are unfilled gaps are high. To correct this, we can use the xterm/urxvt option internalBorder and set the border of ratpoison to 0.
A trial and error process must be done to find the exact number of internalBorder for each combination of resolution and font size. (the border of ratpoison must be set to 0 before doing the tests) The term command line option -b can be used to test for the correct number and then can be saved on the following files.
~/.Xresources
urxvt*internalBorder: 8 #change urxvt to xterm if necessary. Using the font terminus in urxvt at 14px size, 8 is the correct number here.
~/.ratpoisonrc
set border 0
If a combination cannot be found, you could try changing the font size and the font family also. (that changes the required border number)
5 Some More Useful KeyCombos
Ctrl-t ! <Program Name> Start any program
Ctrl-t q Quit ratpoison
Ctrl-t ? Show key bindings
Ctrl-t c Start an X terminal
Ctrl-t n Switch to next window
Ctrl-t p Switch to previous window
Ctrl-t 1-9 Switch to window number 1,2,...
Ctrl-t k Close the current window
Ctrl-t K XKill the current application
Ctrl-t s,S Split the current frame into two vertical,horizontal ones
Ctrl-t Tab,Left,Up,Right,Down Switch to the next,left,top,right,bottom frame.
Ctrl-t Q Make the current frame the only one
Ctrl-t : Execute a ratpoison command
6 Ratpoison and Display Managers
Many display managers (e.g., lightdm) source the available sessions from /usr/share/xsessions/ and most window managers and desktop environments create .desktop files there. However ratpoison instead creates a ratpoison.desktop file in /etc/X11/sessions/. To allow display managers to find ratpoison one may need to copy the ratpoison.desktop file from /etc/X11/sessions/ratpoison.desktop to /usr/share/xsessions/ratpoison.desktop. If the /usr/share/xsessions directory does not exist, create it as root.
