Re: [RP] New user questions & suggestions

[Kelly Collier]

Hi Phil,

Been using Ratpoison for years now, and happily on my Eee since May. 
You're right, Eee+RP is a natural fit.

> 3. I decided that rather than the C-t prefix I'd use one of the 
> otherwise-useless extra modifier keys.  I chose the one to the right 
> of the keyboard with a menu symbol on it.  I set this up by putting 
> this in my .xmodmap:
>
> keycode 117 = Hyper_R
> add Mod3 = Hyper_R
Actually, on my machine, keycode 117 = Menu.   So in my .ratpoisonrc, I have

escape Menu

I actually modded the keyboard layout a good bit. To begin with, I'm a 
Dvorak fan, with mods for French/German. Secondly, I inverted the 
up-arrow and right shift key. Then I ended up inverting the right arrow 
and down arrow, since it makes more sense to keep up and down just above 
and below one another. Finally, and here's where being anal retentive 
clashes with the cramped keyboard, my left arrow also doubles as a 
control key, since I can't live comfortably without a right control key 
when using Screen. Oh yeah, one more: I'm a vim junkie, and so for years 
I've remapped Caps-Lock to escape.

> Then I had to replicate all of the existing root-keymap bindings in a 
> new top-keymap with the H- modifier.  It would be been great if I 
> could have dumped the existing keybindings, and piped them through sed 
> or awk, to do this.  But doing it by hand was a good way to discover 
> all the commands I suppose.  Anyway, pressing e.g. Hyper-0 seems a lot 
> simpler than C-t 0, especially on this cramped keyboard.
>
> On my desktop system I have one of the other modifier keys (the Logo 
> key to the left of the spacebar) set up to launch terminals on various 
> machines.  With shift it makes it a root terminal, and I use different 
> colour schemes for the terminals to make them easy to recognise (it 
> could be a bad mistake to run a command on the wrong machine!; I use 
> reverse-video colour schemes for root).  So I have now set this up in 
> ratpoison; it works well and it's a technique that I recommend:
>
> definekey km s-x exec x-terminal-emulator -bg lightblue ssh xylophone
> definekey km s-X exec x-terminal-emulator -fg white -bg blue ssh 
> address@hidden

Thanks for the idea, I'm going to play with that.

> 5. Say I have four terminals running in four frames.  If I want to 
> "zoom in" to one of them I can "only" it.  But I don't see a way to 
> "zoom out" again, i.e. I can't undo or otherwise reverse the "only" 
> command.  Also, maybe I'd like to really zoom in (i.e. increase the 
> font size).  I could imagine tiling the window with small terminals, 
> and then zooming in so that the other terminals are still in the same 
> relative positions but off the screen.  Does that make any sense to 
> anyone?  Maybe it's not a ratpoison thing, but I think it could still 
> be useful especially on small screens.

Glad you asked that question... I didn't know that the "undo" command 
existed. Not sure that it always did. Time to man ratpoison again.

> 6. Totally off-topic: if anyone knows how to change the font size that 
> Firefox uses for its menu bar and status bar, or better still how to 
> get rid of the menu bar entirely, I'd love to hear from you!  All 
> those wasted pixels.....

Dunno. But are you using Firefox 3? If so, Full Screen (F11) has been 
enough to make me happy. (Much more intelligently implemented than in 
FF2, especially for small screens.)

Cheers,

Kelly