Ratpoison
Ratpoison is a tiling window manager written in C that allows the user to manage applications without a mouse. The user interface is inspired by GNU Screen.
By default, ratpoison controls in much the same way as Emacs. Commands begin by pressing Ctrl+t, and are then followed by another combination such as Ctrl+Space to move to the next window.
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:
~/.ratpoisonrc
# Overriding CTRL+t 'c' to start aterm instead of xterm bind c exec aterm bind f exec firefox
So, if you type Ctrl+t and then f, ratpoison will fire up Firefox.
Ctrl+t is the default escape key, the key used to trigger ratpoison commands. To change the mapping of the escape key to the Windows key, use the following line in your ~/.ratpoisonrc:
Here is a another ~/.ratpoisonrc:
Tips and tricks
Screen reader accessibility
By default, ratpoison is not accessible with Orca. There is a project at https://gitlab.com/stormdragon2976/strychnine that replaces the default ratpoison widgets with GTK counterparts.
Follow the on screen prompts, and you will get a ~/.ratpoisonrc that will automatically launch Orca when it starts. See the included for more options.
Java Swing applications
Java Swing GUI applications assume tiling window managers, and do not go to fullscreen properly with the default ratpoison configuration. However, there is a way to "trick" the Java swing window into thinking it is in a tiling window manager and getting it to go to fullscreen correctly.
First, install wmname. Then add this line to your ~/.ratpoisonrc:
~/.ratpoisonrc
exec wmname LG3D
Multiple workspaces
By default, ratpoison only has one workspace, but using a script called (installed by default) you can have more.
Edit your ~/.ratpoisonrc, and add:
That creates 6 workspaces. By default, you can access to them by using to access the first, 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 (assuming Ctrl+t as your escape key)
URxvt and xterm
URxvt and xterm, as they are installed by default, send resize hints to the window manager. This works in most tiling window managers, but not in ratpoison. The end result is that URxvt/xterm resizes itself in multiples of the font size, rather than resizing to the whole screen, and chances that there are unfilled gaps are high. There are two solutions to this problem, documented below.
Install a patched URxvt
If you use URxvt, the package, among other improvements, sends no resize hints to the window manager. If you install this version of URxvt rather than the default, URxvt will resize properly within ratpoison.
Adjust the border
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.
If a combination cannot be found, you could try changing the font size and the font family also. (that changes the required border number)
Launch on startup
Examples for launching programs when ratpoison starts. File ~/.ratpoisonrc is executed by ratpoison on startup.
Launch urxvt with a tmux session
exec urxvt -e bash -c "tmux -q has-session && exec tmux attach-session -d || exec tmux new-session -n$USER -s$USER@$HOSTNAME"
Wallpaper and transparency
Example for setting transparency using xcompmgr and nitrogen.
First start nitrogen and set the desired wallpaper. Then use this in your ~/.ratpoisonrc
Useful key bindings
| Key bindings | Effect |
|---|---|
Ctrl+t ! <Program Name> | Start any program |
Ctrl+t ? | Show key bindings |
Ctrl+t | Start an X terminal |
Ctrl+t | Switch to next window |
Ctrl+t | Switch to previous window |
Ctrl+t – | Switch to windows 1–9 |
Ctrl+t | Close the current window |
Ctrl+t | XKill the current application |
Ctrl+t s, | Split the current frame into two vertical,horizontal ones |
Ctrl+t , , , Right, | Switch to the next, left, top, right, bottom frame. |
Ctrl+t | Make the current frame the only one |
Ctrl+t | Execute a ratpoison command |
Focus follows mouse
is a build script for ratpoison and can be found in /usr/share/ratpoison/. To enable focus follows mouse, run the following:
# cd /usr/share/ratpoison/ # gcc -o sloppy sloppy.c -lX11 # ./sloppy
To autostart focus follows mouse, add the following to ~/.ratpoisonrc:
exec /usr/share/ratpoison/sloppy
Ratpoison and display managers
Many display managers (e.g., LightDM) source the available sessions from and most window managers and desktop environments create .desktop files there. However ratpoison instead creates a file in . To allow display managers to find ratpoison one may need to copy the ratpoison.desktop file from to . If the directory does not exist, create it as root.