Re: [RP] trying to use THE RATPOISON better

[Kevin Geiss]

On Jan 20, 2005, at 8:00 AM, Robert Lorentz wrote:
> I have searched the wiki and documentation trying to find a feature, 
> perhaps someone can tell me if it exists or not.  I really like having 
> firefox running in frame 0, irssi in frame 1, and xmms in frame 2, 
> which kind of leads to this..
>
> First of all, is there a way to have these load up by default when I 
> start ratpoison?  I could exec the 3, but they have significantly 
> differently load times so they don't end up in that order... I'm 
> looking for something like 'exec xmms and make it reside in frame 2'.  
> Does this exist?

it becomes a matter of timing, but there is a program called 
'xtoolwait' which can really help out on this.

http://www.hacom.nl/~richard/software/xtoolwait.html

you would use it in your .xinitrc like this:

# restore your 3 frames using 'frestore'
ratpoison -c "frestore `cat yourframefile`"
ratpoison -c 'fselect 0'
xtoolwait firefox
ratpoison -c 'fselect 1'
xtoolwait irssi
ratpoison -c 'fselect 2'
xtoolwait xmms

note that I DON'T have '&' at the end of any lines.

xtoolwait spawns the client, waits until the client maps a window, then 
exits. this has the effect of 'pausing' the execution of your .xinitrc 
until that client pops up! very handy.

also, check out my page:

http://www.desertsol.com/~kevin/ratpoison

I use a complicated setup with lots of clients which start up. 
unfortunately, I use a lot of dockapps which confuse xtoolwait since 
they enter the 'withdrawn' state. so I can only use xtoolwait with 
xterm, xload, and a few other of my clients. I wrote a script to 
restore all my clients to their proper places too. hopefully there is 
enough detail on my page. let me know if you have questions or if I 
messed up a link.