Baslinux mailing list

[Lee Forrest <lforrestster AT gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2007 at 12:53:30AM +0000, sindi keesan wrote:

> On Mon, 1 Jan 2007, Lee Forrest wrote:
>
> Regarding ratpoison
>
> >>> This is a pretty small X-window manager (4X swm) modeled
> >>> after screen. I use it on debian. Is excellent. Almost all
> >>> keybindings. Hardly ever have to touch a rodent.
> >>
> >> I have it for SW7.1 (or maybe the SW8.1 glibc) and it is
> >> less useful with Opera than is icewm, which can be used
> >> entirely via keyboard and lets you change focus whereas I
> >> needed to use a mouse in Opera with ratpoison.
> >
> > I am having problems with it. It won't see any aliases (and
> > I've tried _everything_) unless I run '. etc/profile' in each
> > window. When I converted one of them to a shell function, and
> > ran it, it crashed the window.
>
> I have to use scripts instead of aliases in an xterm. But I
> don't usually run any programs in xterms, I use a virtual
> terminal instead.

I assume you mean a plain tty, like you'd switch between
using Ctrl-Alt-F*.

What if you want to run more programs at the same time,
ones that can't be backgrounded? 

How about if you have to really closely compare two
files? Splitvt?

> > I am thinking it needs a 'real' xserver, rather than Xvesa.

My head was up my ass.

> >> You can run X programs without any window manager - check
> >> the archives.
> >
> > Sure. But I run 'xterms' in three windows at startup, and
> > sometimes more.
>
> Why not use screen instead?

Screen is much larger than ratpoison (2X) and you can't
run x-apps. Like xli to view images while using links.

Screen also has networking capabilities, which are redundant
if you are using X.

> Or splitvt? In a virtual terminal.

It's that image thing. When I want to view an image I
want to do it now and in the environment I normally use.
I'm not going to startx on a different tty and then hassle
moving files between them.

Please don't start going on about zgv/svgalib. That app/library
is _broken_ and I don't have the skill to fix it. It's the only
app/lib that has ever crashed linux for me.

[delete]

> > I rely heavily on those aliases, although, oddly, the word
> > doesn't appear in man ash.
>
> I had the same problem and gave up on aliases under X.

Fixed now, thanks to David. You should not have trouble
with them under X.

They work fine with swm and rxvt, and now that I've corrected my
stupid typo, with ratpoison and rxvt.

> > As an interesting aside: Ratpoison with three windows uses
> > about half as much memory as swm with three windows, all
> > other things being equal. (8M to 15M with nothing much going
> > on.)
>
> Are you using a patterned background in swm?

Yes. Stock configuration. 

But I'm using ratpoison now, and it is _wonderful_.

Lee

-- 
BasicLinux: Small is Beautiful
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