Re: [RP] the continuing quest for no rodent dependence

[Shawn Betts]

Joe Corneli <address@hidden> writes:

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

Ratpoison is a window manager that allows the user to perform window
managing tasks without using the mouse. For this reason ratpoison is
rodent-free.

> 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.

Why not use programs that do not depend on the rat? Rather than use a
busted rxvt terminal why not use M-x term RET?

I think what you are talking about should be a program not explicitely
related to ratpoison. Its objective is to control a rat whereas
ratpoison's job is to manage windows.

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

How much experience programming X11 did you say you had? :)

> 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.

I dunno. I think you're thinking about this in the wrong way. You're
thinking, I wanna use XYZ rat dependant program with a busted design
that encourages rat use and discourages keyboard use, and I wanna use
it by moving the the rat with the keyboard. How about finding a
program that does what XYZ does but with the keyboard?

Ratpoison is a piece of the puzzle. You no longer have to control
windows with the pointer. If there is something you want to do then
you should look for a rat-free way to do it. Perhaps you should patch
rxvt to be able to rip arbitrary text rather than write a customized
pointer hack to do it?

> 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.  

I think you're getting goals confused. Ratpoison manages windows
without a pointer. choosing to use some program that requires the
pointer is your problem not ratpoison's :).

Shawn