ratutils

Collection of scripts for working in a Ratpoison/X11 setup

wmpersist

Ratpoison (and Chrome) -specific script to preserve browser window titles across restarts of browser or ratpoison. Will actually work with any program, but has hardcoded class name for chromium at the moment.

rptmux

Emit ratpoison key mappings off Xorg's Super modifier that map to tmux prefix-key command sequences. Running tmux is queried for its bindings, and the mapped commands are then re-mapped in Ratpoison, which means no longer are two separate keypresses needed.

rpmeta

Wraps "ratpoison -c meta" to allow sending multiple meta keys with a short sleep in between (which should help with various terminals... not sure if this is needed in practice)

Also there some more generic utilities for working in xwindows which we'll store here for now since they're used for pseudo "desktop environment" type stuff whilst in ratpoison:

chkbatt

increasing screenflashes as battery drains

xtty.sh

switch x11 window by tty or pid

tmuxtty.sh

switch tmux window by tty or pid

There's a bunch of other random stuff; at some point will maybe update this file or remove it...

scott@smemsh.net
http://smemsh.net/src/ratutils/
http://spdx.org/licenses/GPL-2.0

wmpersist

The script persists browser window titles across restarts. Useful for those who:

• use "ratpoison" window manager
• typically have many browser windows open
• work on them for long sessions (weeks or months)
• like to give them names
• do not like when names disappear upon restart

It allows restarting the browser windows (or Ratpoison), without having to lose the titles given all the browser windows over time. This is very handy for reboots or when applying updates. Backups of the last save file are retained each time a new save is done.

Ratpoison does not itself have any persistence mechanism.

usage

"wmpersist save"

write out chromium window titles to ratpoison winname mappings

"wmpersist load"

take existing windows, search for titles in the save file, and rename/renumber within ratpoison to match them, once chromium has been restarted

Before restarting the browser, and upon adding new windows or making name changes, run this script (save) to dump the mappings. You might create a map:

definekey top M-p verbexec wmpersist save

After browser restart, run script again (load) and the titles will be remapped (along with window numbers and relative sequence). Of course, this assumes your browser will remember which windows it had open (Chrome can be so configured, i.e. "start where I left off.")

Note: you may have to adjust $save_file and $classname if:

• you use a different browser (e.g. Chrome instead of Chromium)
• you want the save files stored elsewhere (default ~/var/rpwm/)
• you want to persist something other than Chrome

dependencies

The scripts use the following commands:

• ratpoison (query and set window numbers)
• xwininfo (gather all window titles)
• xprop (test for withdrawn windows)
• xlsatoms (debugging)
• lsw (debugging)

Also, the scripts use some routines from my shell script library, libsh, but those routines could be added directly to the script. You'll need to do one of the following:

• install the shell library and adjust the path herein
• manually add the routines pulled in by require and include
• reimplement without them (e.g. setenv var val to var=val)

todo

• make $sep pattern same in both rp and xwininfo data gathering functions
• ratpoison needs a target arg available for its window name change command
• move usage to a constant and emit rather than using comment block to document
• use debug routines from libsh rather than ad-hoc inline test-and-print
• this does not work if one of the tabs is a Chromium bookmark manager, unknown reason, have to trace this down UPDATE: it may be because Chrome leaves around withdrawn windows seems like for eg bookmarks and google contacts pages that have been closed, see window_is_withdrawn() test in the code
• make work with other things that just browsers (and other browsers than chromium) but this may not work since each app keeps highly specific titles
• hack this into ratpoison itself, instead
• or generalize it into a general persistence daemon to be used for a management framework
• take class name as command line arg
• support other window managers

rptmux

Queries the running tmux (must be run within) for its current key bindings. Takes each key binding found in the prefix keymap (i.e. the -T prefix binds), and makes a Ratpoison mapping to emit the tmux prefix followed by that binding, bound to Super modifier

Example:

$ tmux list-keys | grep last-window
bind-key -T prefix l last-window

$ ratpoison -c 'help top' | grep s-l
s-l exec rpmeta C-b l

Unfortunately Ratpoison does not allow compound commands in keymaps, so we must fork out to a script (here we use the rpmeta helper also found in these utilities).

All non-prefix maps in tmux are ignored.

rpmeta

Wrapper allowing several successive calls of the ratpoison meta command, essentially:

ratpoison -c arg1
sleep 0.01s
ratpoison -c arg2
sleep 0.01s
...
ratpoison -c argN

Note that the sleep only occurs in-between, not at the end.

This command is used by rptmux to emit the tmux keybindings it learns about, bound to Super key instead of the tmux prefix.