Ratpoison is a tiling window manager

Tiling window manager

In computing, a tiling window manager is a window manager with an organization of the screen into mutually non-overlapping frames, as opposed to the more popular approach of coordinate-based stacking of overlapping objects that tries to fully emulate the desktop metaphor.-Xerox PARC:Although the...

 for the X Window System

X Window System

The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...

 primarily developed by Shawn Betts. Its user interface

User interface

The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...

 and much of its functionality are inspired by the GNU Screen

GNU Screen

GNU Screen is a software application that can be used to multiplex several virtual consoles, allowing a user to access multiple separate terminal sessions inside a single terminal window or remote terminal session...

 terminal

Computer terminal

A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into, and displaying data from, a computer or a computing system...

 multiplexer. Its name reflects a major design goal of ratpoison: it lets the user manage window

Window (computing)

In computing, a window is a visual area containing some kind of user interface. It usually has a rectangular shape that can overlap with the area of other windows...

s without using the mouse.
Unlike other tiling window managers like Ion, ratpoison completely ignores the mouse, and avoids window decoration

Window decoration

In graphical computing, window decorations are provided by window managers to improve the usability of a multi-windowed desktop. They typically consist of a title bar along the top of each window and a minimal border around the other three sides, although this can often be varied upon if the user...

s as much as possible. ratpoison is free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

 licensed under the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

.

Reception

Mark Pilgrim, a frequent user, praised it for being "minimalist" and "configurable". Jeff Covey found it "lightning fast and perfectly stable". Peter Seebach remarked that "the convenience and performance are impressive; the learning curve, however, daunts many users." Similarly, Brian Proffitt observes that "the key commands are well explained in this window manager's man pages, and whatever you do, read these first. The keyboard commands do make sense after some use but initially the learning curve is pretty steep." In the same vein, Bruce Byfield

Bruce Byfield

Bruce Byfield is a journalist who specializes in writing about free and open source software. He has been a contributing editor at , and his articles have appeared on the Datamation, LWN, Linux Developer Network, and LinuxPlanet sites...

 found it (and stumpwm) "virtually unusable until you read the documentation".

Stumpwm

Stumpwm is a window manager intended as a successor to ratpoison, created when Betts found ratpoison growing increasingly large

Software bloat

Software bloat is a process whereby successive versions of a computer program include an increasing proportion of unnecessary features that are not used by end users, or generally use more system resources than necessary, while offering little or no benefit to its users.-Causes:Software developers...

 and "lispy". As explained on the StumpWM wiki, the developers decided to largely reimplement ratpoison in Common Lisp

Common Lisp

Common Lisp, commonly abbreviated CL, is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in ANSI standard document ANSI INCITS 226-1994 , . From the ANSI Common Lisp standard the Common Lisp HyperSpec has been derived for use with web browsers...

's CLX

CLX (Common Lisp)

CLX is the standard X Window System protocol client library for the Common Lisp programming language,1:3 the C equivalence of which is Xlib....

:

StumpWM grew out of the authors' frustration with writing ratpoison in C. Very quickly we realized we were building into ratpoison lispy-emacs

Emacs

Emacs is a class of text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. GNU Emacs has over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work.Development began in the mid-1970s and continues actively...

 style paradigms. We had a REPL

Read-eval-print loop

A read–eval–print loop , also known as an interactive toplevel, is a simple, interactive computer programming environment. The term is most usually used to refer to a Lisp interactive environment, but can be applied to command line shells and similar environments for F#, Smalltalk, Standard ML,...

hanging off 'C-t :', hooks, and a growing subset of Common Lisp in the implementation... It was clear what we really wanted was a window manager written in Lisp from the ground up with lots of room for customizing and real-time hacking.

External links

for ratpoison for Stumpwm