Ratpoison - Windowmanager with no mouse

[Calum]

So, i just found out about RatPoison. It's a windowmanager with no window decorations. It aims to provide a 100% keyboard driven window manager with no mouse dependency whatsoever. I know void main doesn't like using a mouse and i have to admit that when keyboard shortcuts are available i find them much easier to use myself.

There are also a lot of links at the bottom of the page there which aim to add extra functionality to RatPoison, like a toolbar etc, still keyboard driven. This reminds me of the graphical environment a mate of mine i used to know in edinburgh had on his computer. I didn't know anything about linux at the time (so i didn't even know what a window manager was) but basically his window manager was one big square window (with no borders or anything), and three little ones down the side, with each one containing probably a terminal prompt, or possibly a mozilla window or something, and he could just switch between them or get X to show pictures or movies on top of the windows or full screen. Never found out what that interface was but ratpoison sounds like it. he was using LFS so no chance in locating it by figuring out what came with his distro!

I haven't used ratpoison yet (and won't for a little while, going on holiday) but i wanted to share its existence with you people in case you haven't heard of it already.
This may give you an idea of the impetus behind the project:

ratpoison is a Window Manager that puts that sick little rodent out of its misery. Enjoy ratpoison's smooth keyboard handling and slick performance. Don't worry about dependancies, 'cause there ain't none! And best of all, its GNOME incompliant!

edit: wow! how bizarre! it looks as though the motivation for making a mouse independent WM was so that people who were really ripped wouldn't have to break their concentration to find their mouse while working on the computer!

I found that having the proper WM while toking is extremely important.
You need one that absolutely minimizes use of the rodent, and with
scwm's synthetic events, awesome key binding supports and scripting, I
have a setup which allows me to do everything without pushing about
the cursed rolly thing. Thank you Maciej for thinking about all of us
stoners when designing SCWM.

The reason you want to avoid the rodent is that when your coding while
chemically modified you will want to minimize any possible distraction
or break in concentration. The slightest wavering in your attention
will easily explode into a ten minute setback. If you can keep
yourself on-track then I find that productivity is greatly increased,
and with the properly trained mindset bug density on first pass is
usually drastically decreased.

In the past when working with improper window management I have found
that reaching for the rodent and lifting my eyes off my FSF emacs
block cursor can trigger undesired distractions, particularly when I'm
working in non-Lisp dialects (well except for mercury and Pop-11)
because any idle brain wave will be spent bitching to yourself
silently about the lameness of the artificial language you are forced
to be thinking in presently.

[Void Main]

You know, that last quote might appear to be a joke but I believe there to be a lot of truth in it. Having to reach for the mouse is inefficient, and it does cause a break in concentration and a certain amount of recovery time when switching yourself back into keyboard mode. Keys are hard bound, they are always in the same place when you reach for them. A mouse has no physical bounds and may require you to take your eyes from the screen or fumble for it. It is a break in concentration.

Now, it says it is not Gnome compliant and I am not exactly sure what they mean by that statement, I would assume it means Gnome apps will not run under it. Of course it may not be practical to give up all of those applications.

[Tux]

Yeh i've seen screenshots of this WM and it looked really cool, doesn't waste a pixel of your screen space at all.

[Calum]

i haven't tried it yet.
as for the mouse being not in any particular place, i use a trackball, and i think perhaps if one did want to use one of these, the best thing would be if it really was part of the keyboard. the ball, 2 buttons and wheel could probably fit quite well on my keyboard, somewhere around the place where the "warning - health and safety" notice is (above the arrows).

still, this would not eliminate rodent distraction/recovery time, merely reduce it.