Old Computer Challenge 2023 - Day Five
======================================

This evening, the R31 booted again with a nicely lit display,
which can be read effortless. So that is great.

I have no new experiences to report, so in this post I will
tell a bit more about my current setup.

Simple Ratpoison Setup
----------------------

Of all machines I have used with the ratpoison window manager,
this one has the most simple setup.

My plan for this edition of the Challenge was to do as much as
possible with Emacs. Before the challenge I was already using
Emacs for email, use-net, RSS-feeds and following mailing
lists, as well as browse the Gemini- and Gopher space.

I knew that the big browsers like Firefox were not going to
work, so expected to use eww, the web browser in Emacs.

A couple of weeks before the Challenges, I played a bit with
"rde", which is a Linux distribution based on Guix, focused
at developers and power user. It is developed by the brilliant
Andrew Tropin.

It offers a tiling window manager, and when you request a new
terminal, it opens a window with new instance of Emacs. Using
rde was a great inspiration for me, and the simple ratpoison
setup is one of the side effects from that.

For rde, see: https://git.sr.ht/~abcdw/rde

Default prefix
--------------

In the past, I always have set the prefix of ratpoison to
Ctlr-z. 

Lately, I have been experimenting with the default prefix
for both tmux and ratpoison, so Ctrl-b for tmux (and not
Ctrl-a), and Ctrl-t for ratpoison.

I was surprised by how quickly I got used to this change.

$HOME/.ratpoisonrc
------------------

This is my $HOME/.ratpoisonrc:

    set border 0
    bind e exec /usr/local/bin/emacs
    bind d exec /usr/local/bin/scrot -d 4
    bind w exec ~/bin/window

That is all :)

Scrot is for screenshots, the "-d 4" gives a delay of 4
seconds.

The "set border 0" line I just copied from another
.ratpoisonrc file.

$HOME/bin/window is a small script that uses awk and ratmen to
create a textmode popup menu to select and jump to a window:

    #!/bin/sh

    ratpoison -c 'windows %l;%n;%t' | sort -nr | \
    awk -F';' 'BEGIN{ printf "ratmen "} \
    { printf "'\\\"'%s: %s'\\\"' '\\\"'ratpoison -c '\''select %s'\'''\\\"' ", \
    $2, $3, $2 }' | sh

$HOME/.xsession
---------------

My .xsession is also a very simple setup:

    #!/bin/sh

    export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
    export LC_MESSAGES=C

    setxkbmap -model thinkpad -layout nl  -option caps:ctrl_modifier
    xrdb load $HOME/.Xresources
    xsetroot -solid black &

    xmodmap -e "keycode 234 = Prior"
    xmodmap -e "keycode 233 = Next"

    export ENV=$HOME/.kshrc
    xterm  -T tmux -e "/usr/bin/tmux" &
    /usr/local/bin/unclutter &
    ratpoison

The xmodmap lines are there to make the two keys left and
right of the arrow-up key function like Page-up and Page-down.

unclutter is a fine tool, that warps the mouse-pointer out
of sight. This is my usual setup that I use with ratpoison,
I don't know if it would change much on this laptop, because
the mouse it not working.

Links+
------

Prahou inspired me to use links+, which can show pictures when
invoked as "links -g".

During the Challenge I mainly use it to look at screenshots
and other stuff mentioned in the IRC channel, and to access
Honk, the ActivityPub server I am running.

For prahou, see his phlog:
gopher://triapul.cz/1/occ


Last edited: $Date: 2023/07/14 20:11:12 $