Using Icewm as Ratpoison lookalike

There was some discussion here about ways to make Icewm visually more
appealing, with reference to Fluxbox. My own preference in WMs is rather
for as much simplicity as possible. I don't want icons, eye candy, etc.
and prefer the keyboard to the mouse for most purposes - all reasons for
using Icewm. 

They are also reasons for using Ratpoison. I tried that some time ago
but found the tiling business rather irritating so gave up. But after
some Googling recently I noticed that many Ratpoison advocates always
use it fullscreen, without tiling, so I had another look at it. I 
found that it worked very well like that for my needs. 

It then occurred to me that it would be possible to use Icewm in exactly
the same way as Ratpoison, with some advantages. Things like graphical
browsers and the Gimp work better in Icewm than in Ratpoison. It is
possible to configure Ratpoison keys in any way you like but I've
already done that for myself in Icewm, so why start again? And I like
the status bar in Icewm. So, simply by making all my applications run
fullscreen, I get a Ratpoison-like screen but don't lose any of the
features that I like in Icewm.

Do I sacrifice anything? Not really. For my purposes it is unnecessary
and distracting to have a lot of windows open. In any case, I don't run
a lot of applications routinely; I want my browser and mutt available at
a keypress but I don't have to see them when I'm not using them. Most of
the time I'm writing text using vim (gvim) and that's what I need to be
looking at. 

In short, I think this may be a way of using Icewm that has advantages
for people who like to keep things as simple as possible, though I
realise this is probably a minority view. One screen to rule them all
...


-- 
Anthony Campbell - [email protected] 
Microsoft-free zone - Using Debian GNU/Linux 
http://www.acampbell.org.uk - sample my ebooks at
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/acampbell

-- 
Anthony Campbell - [email protected] 
Microsoft-free zone - Using Debian GNU/Linux 
http://www.acampbell.org.uk - sample my ebooks at
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/acampbell


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMC VNX: the world's simplest storage, starting under $10K
The only unified storage solution that offers unified management 
Up to 160% more powerful than alternatives and 25% more efficient. 
Guaranteed. http://p.sf.net/sfu/emc-vnx-dev2dev