[RP] the continuing quest for no rodent dependence

[Joe Corneli]

I noticed long ago that the goal of
being rodent-free has not yet been
attained.  Specfically, I think ratpoison
should incorporate this feature: 

C-<space> should trigger a "mouse-1-down"
event, then <left> (or <right>, <up>, 
C-n, etc.) should trigger the appropriate mouse 
movement events, and C-<y> should trigger the 
mouse-3-down event.  For the computer-savy,
we should include a keyboard controller
for mouse-2 as well.  The behaviour
of M-f etc. in Emacs/rxvt/etc. should 
also be captured in ratpoison and 
provide mouse-like behavior (though
motion would be character-wise instead
of pixel-wise when the cursor is in
a text environment). The location
of the on-screen pointer should in
general not be affected by these 
keyboard actions.  In non-text
environments (e.g. The GIMP, gv, xv),
pixel-wise motion should probably
be provided and the location of the
on-screen pointer _should_ be be
changed.

I can't imagine that these objectives
would really be very hard to obtain.

There are several reasons I think that
ratpoison should have this feature: 
the main reason is to make it so that 
the claim of "no rodent dependence"
is more valid -- and the second 
reason is that having a window manager
with no rodent dependence _whatsoever_
would be an extremely cool thing.

This may sound like a feature that 
would take a lot of new code -- I'm not
sure if it would or not -- and people
worried about bloat may not like 
the suggestion.  However, I think
that an implementation of the feature
mentioned above is needed in order
to accomplish ratpoison's #1 goal.
Hence the code should be completed 
regardless of other considerations...
of course in the most efficient, least
bloaty way possible (in order to respect
ratpoison's other goals).

I feel so strongly about this that I
am quite willing to spend some time
working on the appropriate code -- but
I would like some guidance on how to
get started from ya'll. (And even
then I can't promise to get the code
done terribly quickly.)

Joe