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

[Joe Corneli]

  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.

Fair enough.

  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?

Hm. Well, I can give it a try.  Ok, I've tried it -- at first take its
hard to say which is more busted. Perhaps due to my tcshrc and not to any
fault of term... I'll give it another try after screening the tcshrc for
bad juju.

But anyway, I guess my point is that _X windows_ is the program that
"depends on the rat" in the sense that its copy-and-paste mechanism is not
keyboard driven the same way Emacs's is.  Forget about what I said about
controlling xv or whatever and focus on the copy-and-paste thing: it is a
big problem.

  I think what you are talking about should be a program not explicitely
  related to ratpoison.

Yes, now I'm thinking it may be a patch to X11.

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

None of course, but hard is always a relative term. The feature I'm
thinking about should be a lot simpler than the X code that controls
the location of the on-screen pointer for example.

  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?

That is a good suggestion, but probably the M-x term RET suggestion
will be easier for me to get working.  I agree that a pointer hack
is not the way to go at all.

  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 :).

Hm, well yes and no - the problem I think is with X windows, which of
course is a ratpoison dependency.  Sure, after reorganizing my life
slightly, I could do all my text-based computing (and more) in Emacs.
But there is a lot of other cool software out there that isn't rat
dependent except in the sense of copy-and-paste issues.  (E.g., Lynx,
XEmacs, etc.)  I'm not sure which would be more valuable to me - learning
how to use the packages etc. that do essentially the same thing these
programs do within Emacs, or learning how to write the code that would
enable me to copy and paste among the various programs.

Joe