First ratpoison setup,

Hi all.  First step into ratpoison, I'm running into some issues that
I thought must be me not understanding the docs, but now it looks like
the instance I'm using may not be working correctly.

Short version: I think my instance isn't giving the output we expect
on the Program Bar.

  - OS: Gentoo x86_64, up to date;
  - ratpoison version 1.4.9, built today, package details below.

Learning from "General Use":

  http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/doc/General-Use.html

...if I bring up a fresh instance and type "C-t c", I get a full
screen with a fresh shell.  Typing "C-t c" again shows a new shell,
and so on.  Once there's some text in a shell, I can flip through them
using "C-t [numeral]", starting with "0" and working up.  So far so
good.

But, "C-t w" doesn't give any output.  "C-t :" does give the ":"
prompt where we expect it, but typing "windows" there behaves the same
way "C-t w" does.  Other commands I've tried to learn seem to work
fine, including input I type, but output from the Program Bar doesn't
appear.  Well, almost:

While learning to use ":vsplit" and ":hsplit" so that the upper right
corner was no longer filled by a shell, I've noticed that I am getting
some output there: a tiny vertical line shows up at the right edge,
hangs there a few seconds like I'd expect the output to do, then goes
away.

OS is Gentoo, up to date.

Version:

  % equery l ratpoison | cat
  x11-wm/ratpoison-1.4.9

It's Gentoo, so the build may have settings we care about.  Summary of
options as I've got them currently; "+" set to on, "-" off:

  % equery u ratpoison | cat
  +debug
  -emacs
  +history
  -sloppy
  +xft
  +xrandr

The "debug" setting means what you expect.  There's an example at:

  http://ix.io/A2v

Happy to make more examples if that'd help.  Give me details.

Maybe relevant: all of this is being done on a VPN.  Some details there:

Server:

*  net-misc/tigervnc
      Latest version available: 1.8.0
      Latest version installed: 1.8.0
      Size of files: 7308 KiB
      Homepage:      http://www.tigervnc.org
      Description:   Remote desktop viewer display system
      License:       GPL-2

Client runs on the same host that houses the server, and is accessed
through ssh.  From "ps -ef":

  /usr/bin/Xvnc :1 -geometry 2000x1000 -auth /home/mjinks/.Xauthority
-desktop gaea:1 (mjinks) -fp /usr/share/fonts/misc -pn -rfbauth
/home/mjinks/.vnc/passwd -rfbport 5901 -rfbwait 3000

Happy to provide other info if it's helpful.  Thanks.