About:
Ratpoison is a simple window manager with no large library dependencies, no fancy graphics, no window decorations, and no rodent dependence. It is largely modeled after GNU Screen, which has done wonders in the virtual terminal market. All interaction with the window manager is done through keystrokes. ratpoison has a prefix map to minimize the key clobbering that cripples EMACS and other quality pieces of software. All windows are maximized and kept maximized to avoid wasting precious screen space.

Author:
Shawn [contact developer]

Rating:	reset 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
7.73/10.00 (24 votes)

Homepage:
http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison
Tar/GZ:
http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/ratpoison/
CVS tree (cvsweb):
http://savannah.nongnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/ratpoison/
Mailing list archive:
http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/ratpoison-devel

Trove categories: [change]

[Development Status]		5 - Production/Stable
[Intended Audience]		Developers, End Users/Desktop
[License]		OSI Approved :: GNU General Public License (GPL)
[Operating System]		POSIX
[Programming Language]		C
[Topic]		Desktop Environment :: Window Managers

Dependencies: [change]
X11 (required)
[download links]

 Branches

Branch	Version	Last release	License	URLs
Default	1.4.3	20-Feb-2008	GNU General Public License (GPL)

 Articles referencing this project

• The Antidesktop
  by jeff covey , in Themes
  Sat, Oct 12th 2002 00:00
  

 Comments

[»] Problems with various console apps
by fbhjr - Jul 18th 2003 23:20:18

I tried this wm based on a link to the freshmeat article. Fantastic concept, just what I wanted for an old IBM 560 laptop that was to be enlisted to back-and-forth library duty (the old lappy you don't mind having stolen). Unfortunately, I have to give it poor marks. I was able to compile it to use aterm, xterm, and rxvt on different occasions. Each time console apps like "less" and "man" (essential one that latter, no?) displayed their pages only on half the screen real estate (800x600) and also presented various forms of buffer chaos. Having visited the #ratpoison irc chan on freenode, I was told that it was an "X bug" by a helpful chap who shall remain nameless. An X bug?

He informed me that I should use an: "eval `resize`" -- and this indeed did solve the issue...only it was necessary to do that for each xterm.

I would love to be able to use a wm like rp...seems like the most minimalistic around -- but unless it can handle ultra-common apps like "less" and "man," I must warn other lightweight wm seekers away.

F/H

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[»] Re: Problems with various console apps
by Shawn - Aug 30th 2003 23:19:35


> I tried this wm based on a link to the
> freshmeat article. Fantastic concept,
> just what I wanted for an old IBM 560
> laptop that was to be enlisted to
> back-and-forth library duty (the old
> lappy you don't mind having stolen).
> Unfortunately, I have to give it poor
> marks. I was able to compile it to use
> aterm, xterm, and rxvt on different
> occasions. Each time console apps like
> "less" and "man"
> (essential one that latter, no?)
> displayed their pages only on half the
> screen real estate (800x600) and also
> presented various forms of buffer chaos.
> Having visited the #ratpoison irc chan
> on freenode, I was told that it was an
> "X bug" by a helpful chap who
> shall remain nameless. An X bug?
>
> He informed me that I should use an:
> "eval `resize`" -- and this
> indeed did solve the issue...only it was
> necessary to do that for each xterm.
>
> I would love to be able to use a wm like
> rp...seems like the most minimalistic
> around -- but unless it can handle
> ultra-common apps like "less"
> and "man," I must warn other
> lightweight wm seekers away.
>
> F/H

The resize bug is not a bug in X but a race condition in Xterm. As far as I understand the same problem is present in Ion. Some users have noticed that it has disappeared with newer versions of XFree86.

If you experience this problem use the redisplay command in ratpoison which is bound to C-t l. This will force a resize event and the xterm with fix itself.

Shawn

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[»] Re: Problems with various console apps
by artm - Dec 4th 2003 03:28:31

workaround: 1. start ratpoison 2. start xterm (e.g. "^T c") 3. issue redisplay command (e.g. "^T l") 4. issue the following in xterm: "echo "XTerm*geometry: ${COLUMNS}x${LINES}" >> ~/.Xresources" of course the .Xresources should be loaded ("xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources") on X startup but most people have that bit setup. i do for example, although i can't find where - must be default behaviour of gentoo's xinit.

--
artm

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[»] Re: Problems with various console apps
by Steven L - Nov 22nd 2003 18:04:04

I had the same problem with my xterms, but I do everything in Screen anyway, and there's no problem.

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[»] ratpoison rocks
by rcy - Aug 29th 2000 13:50:35

now i can finally throw the bloody thing away.

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[»] Re: ratpoison rocks
by Shawn - Mar 5th 2001 20:28:16


> now i can finally throw the bloody thing
> away.
>
Totally, dude! This puts every WM I've tried to total shame!



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[»] Re: ratpoison rocks
by Christian Neumann - Oct 14th 2002 15:36:41


>
> % now i can finally throw the bloody
> thing
> % away.
> %
>
>
> Totally, dude! This puts every WM I've
> tried to total shame!
>
>
yeah, very cool wm. but working with gimp in ratpoison is very uncomfortable :[






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[»] Re: ratpoison rocks
by Shawn - May 15th 2003 14:56:55


>
> %
> % % now i can finally throw the bloody
> % thing
> % % away.
> % %
> %
> %
> % Totally, dude! This puts every WM
> I've
> % tried to total shame!
> %
> %
>
>
> yeah, very cool wm. but working with
> gimp in ratpoison is very uncomfortable
> :[%
>
>
>
>


I've solved the problem. Now when you try to boot the gimp, ratpoison segfaults. It's the only clean solution.

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