[9fans] Plan 9 keyboard and mouse

[Iain Watson Smith]

Hello! I'm a relatively new user to plan 9, and I am studying it as part of an elective unit at university for free and open source software development. So far the experience is interesting and I am using a plan9 port to test out the features of plan9. I have a question about keyboard and mouse interaction in the OS that relates to fast keys available for the windows. Do any exist for use of say windows switching, closing or any other operations for menus within plan 9?

[Yaroslav]

> I have a question about keyboard and mouse interaction in the OS that
> relates to fast keys available for the windows. Do any exist for use of say
> windows switching, closing or any other operations for menus within plan 9?

The fast keys are mouse buttons, that's it. Just take it: once you get
used to it you'll feel allright about this.

[Stephen Wiley]

I believe sl wrote a program that lets you group windows onto function keys (so pushing the function key for a window group will cycle through the windows) that's not part of the main distribution though.

If your having trouble with windows getting buried, winwatch will list open windows and let you switch between them with the mouse (this was an issue I had when I first started playing with plan9).

[Matthew Veety]

I'm adding similar functionality to the windows alt-tab to my mod of Rio. The function keys thing sounds cool though. Where is the source for that?

--
Veety

[s...@9front.org]

> I believe sl wrote a program that lets you group windows onto
> function keys

Specifically, taruti hacked rio to map certain windows to a tag
(similar to dwm) by writing stings to /dev/wctl, then switch between
the tags by hitting a function key, which brings all the windows in
the given tag to the top.

I packaged this for 9front and included some scripts that I launch
from my riostart to setup my environment:

http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/pkg/386/hjrio-2012.04.17.tbz

Unpack over / and the source will be installed in
/sys/src/pkg/hjrio-2012.04.17 (no binaries will be installed on the
system until you run 'mk install' in the source directory).

So far as I know, I'm the only person who actually uses this code.

My rio environment is comprised of four general sections, constructed
by four (included) rc scripts. The four scripts -- header, verso,
recto and spread -- organize the screen as follows:

header
the following are always visible
winwatch
faces
weather ticker displayed via aux/statusmsg
stats
verso
tag one
several irc7 windows displaying one channel per window
recto
tag one
tw
tag three
kprint
ssh session to openbsd
telnet session to 9bbs
tag five
nedmail
spread
tag two
sam

These are in turn launched from my riostart:

% cat $home/lib/riostart
#!/bin/rc
header
spread
recto
verso -i
if(~ $sysname mt*)
recto -6
if not
recto -3

In the end, it all looks something like this:

http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/rio/img/tagone.png
http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/rio/img/tagtwo.png
http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/rio/img/tagthree.png
http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/rio/img/tagfour.png
http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/rio/img/tagfive.png

The result is that the environment snaps into being whenever
I boot my terminal. I switch between tags by hitting the
corresponding function key (f1 for tag one, f2 for tag two,
and so on). In practice, I almost never have to create or
destroy windows unless I'm doing something temporary or
unusual.

-sl

[Aram Hăvărneanu]

sl wrote:
> http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/rio/img/tagfour.png

Wow, I didn't know linuxemu got so good.

--
Aram Hăvărneanu

[s...@9front.org]

> sl wrote:
>> http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/rio/img/tagfour.png
>
> Wow, I didn't know linuxemu got so good.

Ah. I left this one out of my description:

spread
tag four
vncv connected to a headless openbsd machine

The available mroot for linuxemu is still based on
Debian Sarge, which can't quite manage Chrome or
Chromium. The newest working browser I've found for
that environment is opera_10.11.4791.gcc3.qt3_i386.deb.

Some points on using linuxemu with equis:

- No shared snarf buffer, unlike with vncv
- Unpredictable instability, resource exhaustion, etc.
- Even Opera 10.11 is incompatible with many modern sites

-sl