Hacker News Reader

Comment by dimatura | Hacker News Reader

I've been using tiling window managers for over 10 years, and for this time has been spent on ratpoison (after brief stints with wmii, awesome and dwm).

Despite i3/xmonad/bspwm/etc/etc I keep going back to ratpoison for two features I haven't found elsewhere:

- chained key commands, a la emacs. E.g., I use C-a b to open a bash terminal. I do use non-chained commands, like Mod4+n to go to the next window, but chained key commands can be much easier to do one-handed, and so far it seems ratpoison is the only to offer built in support for this.

- manual window arrangement. I don't care for the window layouts most tiling WM's since dwm/xmonad seem to use.

Until I see those features in another wm I'll probably remain one of the handful of ratpoison users.

View on HN

After using Ratpoison as my only window manager starting in 2004, I've now switched to Stumpwm for the better multiscreen support. (It's the successor to Ratpoison, written in Common Lisp.)

Stumpwm really is great for multiple monitors, I have an 8 screen setup and it works flawlessly.

I'm curious, what kind of layout do you use? In particular, do you sometimes leave some part of the screen not not covered by some tile? (If so, why?) It seems to me that you always look for a grid, no?

Also, how many tiles do you end up having on average on the same window? I'm curious because to me any value higher than 3 doesn't seem practical, I'd rather switch to another window.

Finally, do you save your layouts? It seems like a lot of work if you have a very precise layout and it's discarded when you shut down.

BSPWM supports both. You can chain key commands with sxhkd (which is completely decoupled from bspwm actually, but most use it with bspwm), and BSPWM completely supports manual tiling.

I'd be interesting to hear more on what manual window arrangement means to you. It's not obvious to me what you are indicating.

I'm pretty sure writing chained commands would be 2-3 lines of Lua. You're welcome to keep waiting but I invite you to dip your toes in & see what it'd look like. I rather suspect you'd find a community interested in helping you chase your dreams. No need to be bystander and follower on this one.

Have you tried Stumpwm? It's meant to be the successor to Ratpoison. Written entirely in Common Lisp, and allows for configuration while it's running. I've been using it full time for almost a year and I doubt I'll switch anytime soon.

I'm just now in the process of moving from XFCE to Ratpoison - I'm trying more and more to memorize the hot-keys and avoid moving my hand to the mouse.

i3 has modes which sort of allow the chained key command idea.

i3 has mode maps which are not quite like chained commands, but pretty close (e.g. you have to exit the map instead of just abandoning the chain if you change your mind halfway through a press).

I love them, they can do anything and you have the option of a pop up key map that displays the key function (or whatever you want) once you hit the first key.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com