ratpoison can be controlled with commands (so called colon-commands). The summary of available commands is listed below:
| abort | Command |
| This is a pretty useless command. By default, it is bound to C-t g, and its purpose is to abort other commands. |
| addhook hook command | Command |
|
Add a command to hook. When the hook is run, command
will be executed.
The following hooks are available:
|
| alias name command | Command |
An allows you to name a ratpoison command something else. For
instance, if you frequently open emacs you may want to make an alias
called emacs that loads emacs. You would do it like this:
: alias emacs exec emacs
An alias is treated exactly like a colon command in that you can call
it from the colon prompt, bind it to a key, and call it
non-interactively with |
| banish | Command |
| Banish the mouse to the lower right corner of the screen. |
| bind Key command | Command |
Bind a key to a ratpoison command. This command takes two arguments: the
key to bind and the command to run. For example, to bind C-t R to
restart ratpoison:
: bind R restart
If no command is specified then bind works exactly like |
| chdir | Command |
| Change the current directory for ratpoison. |
| clrunmanaged | Command |
Clear the unmanaged window list. See unmanage for an
explanation of the unmanaged window list.
|
| colon command | Command |
| Run a ratpoison command. |
| curframe | Command |
| Indicate which frame is the current frame. |
| defbarborder n | Command |
| Set the border width for the bar window. |
| defbargravity g | Command |
Set the default alignment for the message bar. See the gravity command.
When called non-interactively with no arguments, the current setting is returned. |
| defbarpadding x y | Command |
|
Set the horizontal and vertical padding inside the bar.
When called non-interactively with no arguments, the current setting is returned. |
| defbgcolor color | Command |
| Set the background color for all text ratpoison displays. color is any valid X11 color. |
| defborder n | Command |
|
Set the border width for all windows.
When called non-interactively with no arguments, the current setting is returned. |
| deffgcolor color | Command |
| Set the foreground color for all text ratpoison displays. color is any valid X11 color. |
| deffont font | Command |
Set the font. font is a font string like 9x15bold.
|
| definputwidth n | Command |
|
Set the width of the input window.
When called non-interactively with no arguments, the current setting is returned. |
| defmaxsizegravity g | Command |
Set the default alignment for windows with maxsize hints. See the
gravity command.
When called non-interactively with no arguments, the current setting is returned. |
| defpadding left top right bottom | Command |
|
Set the padding around the edge of the screen.
When called non-interactively with no arguments, the current setting is returned. |
| defresizeunit pixels | Command |
| Set the number of pixels a frame will grow or shrink by when being dynamically resized. |
| deftransgravity g | Command |
Set the default alignment for transient windows. See the
gravity command.
When called non-interactively with no arguments, the current setting is returned. |
| defwaitcursor n | Command |
|
Set whether the rat cursor should change into a square when waiting
for a key. A non-zero number means change the cursor. Zero means don't
change the cursor.
When called non-interactively with no arguments, the current setting is returned. |
| defwinfmt fmt | Command |
Set the default window format for the windows command. By
default it is N-W. The following is a list of valid format
characters:
When called non-interactively with no arguments, the current setting is returned. |
| defwingravity g | Command |
Set the default gravity for normal windows. See the
gravity command.
When called non-interactively with no arguments, the current setting is returned. |
| defwinliststyle setting | Command |
The window list can be displayed in a row or a column. setting
can be row or column.
|
| defwinname name | Command |
There are three resources ratpoison can get a window's name from: the
WMNAME hint, the res_name from the WMCLASS hint, or the res_class from
the WMCLASS hint. name can be title which is what most
window managers put in the title bar, name which is the
res_name, or class which is the res_class.
When called non-interactively with no arguments, the current setting is returned. |
| delete | Command |
| This deletes the current window. You can access it with the C-t k keystroke. |
| newkmap kmap | Command |
| Delete the keymap, kmap. |
| echo text | Command |
| Display text as a message. |
| escape key | Command |
Set the prefix to to key. For example escape C-b sets the
prefix key to <C-b>.
|
| exec command | Command |
| Execute a shell command. By default, C-t ! does this. |
| fdump | Command |
| dump the current frame layout as text. When used non-interactively (from the command-line), ratpoison will print the frame layout. When used interactively, nothing happens. |
| focus | Command |
| cycle through ratpoison's frames. |
| focusdown | Command |
| Move to the frame below the current frame. |
| focuslast | Command |
| Switch to the last focused frame. |
| focusleft | Command |
| Move to the frame left of the current frame. |
| focusright | Command |
| Move to the frame right of the current frame. |
| focusup | Command |
| Move to the frame above the current frame. |
| frestore frames | Command |
Restore the frame layout based on the list of frames
frames. frames should be the text that was printed after
calling fdump.
|
| fselect n | Command |
| Select a frame by number. If an argument is passed to it then attempt to select the frame whose number is n. If not, ratpoison will print a number at the top left corner of each frame and wait for the user to type the number they wish to select. Currently there is no way to select a frame whose number is greater than 9 unless the number is passed as an argument. |
| gdelete group | Command |
Delete a group. group is optional. If it is not specified
ratpoison will attempt to delete the current group. Only empty groups
can be deleted. To empty a group see gmerge.
|
| getenv env | Command |
| Display the value of the environment variable, env. |
| gmerge group | Command |
| Merge group with the current group. All windows in group will be moved to the current group. group is not deleted. |
| gmove group | Command |
| Move the current window to group. |
| gnew name | Command |
| Create a new group with the name name. name is optional. This new group becomes the new group. |
| gnewbg name | Command |
This is the same as gnew except that the current group does
not change.
|
| gnext | Command |
| Go to the next group in the list. |
| gprev | Command |
| Go to the previous group in the list. |
| gravity g | Command |
Change the gravity of the current window. A normal window will default
to the top-left corner of the screen, but it can also be placed at the
bottom-right corner of the screen. Valid values for g are the 8
directions northwest, north, northeast,
east, southeast, south, southwest and
west, clockwise from the top left corner. center will
center the window in the frame. g and can be abbreviated to the
standard compass 1 and 2 letter abbreviations (i.e. nw,
s, etc).
When called non-interactively with no arguments, the current setting is returned. |
| groups | Command |
Display a list of groups with a similar format to windows.
|
| gselect group | Command |
| Select a particular group by name or number. If group is not provided, ratpoison will interactively prompt for the group. |
| help | Command |
| Display a help screen that lists all bound keystrokes. |
| info | Command |
| Display information about the current window. |
| kill | Command |
This destroys the current window. Normally you should only need to
use delete, but just in case you need to rip the heart out of a
misbehaving window this command should do the trick. Also available as
C-t K.
|
| lastmsg | Command |
| Display the last message. |
| license | Command |
| Display ratpoison's license. By default, this is bound to C-t V. |
| link key | Command |
Call the command that key is bound to. For instance
link C-t would call the command other and switch
to the last window.
|
| meta | Command |
| Send a C-t to the current window. |
| msgwait n | Command |
|
Set the bar's timeout in seconds.
When called non-interactively with no arguments, the current setting is returned. |
| newkmap kmap | Command |
| Create a new keymap named kmap. |
| newwm window-manager | Command |
| This is a bad-bad command. It kills ratpoison and revives that ugly rodent! Yuck! Avoid! |
| next | Command |
| This jumps you to the next window in the window list. This one is bound to three keystrokes, namely C-t n, C-t space, and C-t enter. |
| nextscreen | Command |
This jumps you to the next X11 screen. nextscreen is
used for dual-head displays and multiple monitor setups.
|
| number n target | Command |
|
Set a window's number to n. If another window occupies the
requested number already, then the windows' numbers are swapped.
The second argument, target, is optional. It should be the number of the window whose number will be changed. If target is omitted ratpoison defaults to the current window. |
| only | Command |
| Kill all frames but the current one. |
| other | Command |
| This toggles between the current window and the last window. By default, this is bound to C-t C-t. |
| prev | Command |
| This jumps you to the previous window in the window list. By default, this is bound to C-t p. |
| prevscreen | Command |
This jumps you to the previous X11 screen. prevscreen is
used for dual-head displays and multiple monitor setups.
|
| quit | Command |
| Quit ratpoison. |
| readkey kmap | Command |
| Read a key from the keyboard and execute the command associated with it in the keymap, kmap. |
| redisplay | Command |
| Redisplay the current window, just like C-t l would do. |
| remhook hook command | Command |
Remove command from the hook. See addhook for a list
of available hooks.
|
| remove | Command |
| Kill the current frame. This is a no-op if there is only one frame. |
| resize horizontal vertical | Command |
Resize the current frame by horizontal pixels horizontally, and
vertical pixels vertically. If no arguments are given and the
command is called interactively, ratpoison will let the user
dynamically resize the frame using C-p to shrink vertically,
C-n to grow vertically, C-b to shrink horizontally,
C-f to grow horizontally, and s to shrink the frame to the
size of the window (See the shrink command). When you have
resized the frame to your liking, press Return to finish.
|
| restart | Command |
| Restart ratpoison. |
| rudeness n | Command |
|
The rudeness command lets you decide what windows pop-up automatically
and when. This is often useful for those deep hack sessions when you
absolutely can't be disturbed.
There are two kinds of windows: normal windows (like an xterm) and transient windows (generally pop-up dialog boxes). When a client program wants to display a new window it makes a requests to ratpoison. ratpoison then decides whether to grant the request and display the window or ignore it. A client program can also request that one of its windows be raised. You can customize ratpoison to either honour these requests (the default operation) or ignore them. n is a number from 0 to 15. Each of the four bits determine which requests ratpoison grants.
For example, if you wanted only wanted to grant transient windows
raise requests and display requests you would type When called non-interactively with no arguments, the current setting is returned. |
| select n | Command |
This jumps you to window n where n is the window number as
shown in the Program Bar. You can do the same trick with
C-nselect -.
|
| select window-name | Command |
| Go to a window by name. A shortcut is C-t '. |
| setenv env value | Command |
| Set the environment variable env to value |
| shrink | Command |
| If a window has resize increment hints, such as xterms, the window may not be able to take up the whole frame. In this case, use this command to suck the frame up to the to window, reclaiming any wasted space. |
| source file | Command |
| Read a text file containing ratpoison commands. |
| split n | Command |
| hsplit n | Command |
|
Split the current frame horizontally in two. The last accessed window
not occupying a frame will be the second window.
n is either a fraction of the form If it is a pixel, the original frame is resized to that many pixels. If n has a minus sign before it, then the new frame will shrink by that many pixels. |
| startup_message state | Command |
Turn on or off the startup_message. This is most useful in your
.ratpoisonrc file. state can be on or off.
When called non-interactively with no arguments, the current setting is returned. |
| tmpwm WM | Command |
| Gives control over to another window manager and regains control once it has terminated. WM is the path to the new window manager. This command is useful when you want to temporarily take a look at another window manager, or program under a different window manager, but you want to come back to ratpoison when you've finished your investigation. |
| time | Command |
| Show current time. Disappears after 5 seconds, like all other info bars. In the default setup, the C-t a keystroke is bound to this command. |
| title title | Command |
| Rename the currently active window. This name will remain for the duration of the window's life, unless you change it again. By default, the C-t A keystroke is bound to this command. |
| unalias name | Command |
| Remove name from the list of defined aliases. |
| unbind key | Command |
| Unbind a keystroke. |
| unmanage text | Command |
|
Add text to the unmanaged window list. Any window whose name
matches any of the strings in the unmanaged window list will not be
handled in any way by ratpoison. This only applies to new windows (not
windows already managed by ratpoison).
When called non-interactively with no arguments, the list is returned. |
| unsetenv env | Command |
| Clear the value of the environment variable, env. |
| verbexec command | Command |
| Verbosely exec the shell command command. Raptoison displays a message saying command was executed. |
| version | Command |
| Print ratpoison version. By default, this is bound to C-t v. |
| vsplit n | Command |
|
Split the current frame vertically in two. The last accessed window
not occupying a frame will be the second window.
n is either a fraction of the form If it is a pixel, the original frame is resized to that many pixels. If n has a minus sign before it, then the new frame will shrink by that many pixels. |
| warp state | Command |
Toggle rat warping. By default ratpoison saves the position of the
rat when leaving a window and when the user returns to the window the
rat's position is restored. This can be counter-intuitive, so you can
toggle it with this command. state can be on or off.
|
| windows fmt | Command |
|
This displays the Program Bar which displays the windows you currently
have running. The number before each window name is used to jump to
that window. You can do this by typing C-t n where n
is the number of the window. Note that only windows with numbers from
0 to 9 can be referenced using this keystroke. To reach windows with
numbers greater than 9, use C-t ' and type the number at the
prompt.
After 5 seconds the Program Bar disappears. This command is bound to C-t w by default. When invoked from the command-line like this, $ ratpoison -c windows
Instead of a message bar, you will get a list of the windows printed
to stdout. This allows you to write more advanced scripts than simple
keyboard macros. This is where fmt comes into play. If
|