Groups

ratpoison provides functionality to group windows together. This coupled with saving and restoring frames configurations is what most people would call virtual desktops or workspaces.

While ratpoison doesn't explicitly provide support for such things, it does allow you to write scripts to this end. Such a script exists in contrib/ called rpws. Consult that file for details on setting up workspaces inside ratpoison.

Groups are more general purpose than workspaces. windows from one group can be visible along with windows from another group. If you switch to a different group nothing changes except the list of windows you can cycle through. ratpoison allows the user to move a window from one group to another, merge two groups, create new groups, and delete existing ones.

The following is a list of of commands used for manipulating groups.

gnew name

Command

Create a new group with the name name. name is optional. The new group becomes the current group.

gnewbg name

Command

This is the same as gnew except that the current group does not change.

groups

Command

Display a list of groups with a similar format to windows.

gmove group

Command

Move the current window to group.

gnext

Command

Go to the next group in the list.

gprev

Command

Go to the previous group in the list.

gselect group

Command

Select a particular group by name or number. If group is not provided, ratpoison will interactively prompt for the group.

gmerge group

Command

Merge group with the current group. All windows in group will be moved to the current group. group is not deleted.

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.