Today I read an article on freshmeat about an X window manager called ratpoison, designed to behave like GNU Screen. It has no graphical presense at all. Every window is maximized and all the window manager controls are on the keyboard and work just like screen. It's a compelling concept, particularly for someone like myself that first experienced the joys of multi-tasking through screen.
However, I won't be switching to ratpoison anytime soon. I've been using X windows long enough that I can't do without mutliple workspaces. And a toolbar with icons for the programs I use frequently is really essential. Also, ratpoison is so radically different from most X windowmanagers that some programs are practically useless. Cgoban for example, uses multiple windows and would be a real pain to use in ratpoison.
However, that doesn't mean I can't get anything out of the article. I was inspired to take another pass at my custom Sawfish config. I added many more keybindings, allowing me to traverse my workspaces, launch applications and kill without leaving the keyboard. That combined with more use of maximized windows should confer much of the benefits (to me) of ratpoison, without rendering some apps unusable.
-sam
