[nmglug] gnome-terminal short cut with MetaCity

[Karl Hegbloom]

On Thu, 2005-06-02 at 16:23 -0600, Jason Davis wrote:
>  Now that j.s. showed me brightside I have switched to MetaCity as my
> window manager. However , the only way i see to start a gnome-term
> via a keyboard shortcut is to have the run dialog come up.

I really like the Sawfish WM.  It's configuration dialog lets you bind
any key to any function defined for it, and you can define more of them
if you like, by writing some Lisp code for that.  It's the Emacs of
window managers, sporting a really nice built-in Lisp language (that can
also run r4rs Scheme).

There are some extension programs for it also.  One of my favorite ones
is called 'iswitch-window.jl', which I found in a Sawfish Lisp
repository.

I've built a Debian package containing a few sawfish add-ins, along with
some files for /etc/skel that give a new user a .sawfish directory.  You
can download it from:

 http://www.laclinux.com/~karlheg/debian/lac-sawfish-addons_2_i386.deb

I like to bind W-w on #'iswitch-window, and W-Menu on
#'iswitch-swap-top-two.  I set the 'W' prefix to mean the "Windows Logo"
key.  (It should have a penguin on it really...)  So now when I push
W-w, a box pops up in the middle of the screen showing a list of open
windows.  I can type a regexp or substring matching a window, and the
list narrows to show only ones that match.  Pressing Tab cycles the
list, and Enter selects the top one.  The W-Menu key flips between the
last two active windows.  

I bind W-M on #'maximize-full-toggle, so that it makes a window go full
screen with no frame.  I like to have my XEmacs, xpdf, or ggv full
screen like that while I work.

So, I can have the XEmacs texinfo frame open, and my editor frame on top
full screen with no frame.  I push W-w and type "info", and the list
narrows to only the texinfo one.  I push Enter, and now the info manual
is on top.  I push W-Menu, and flip back and forth between info and
editor.

W-t could easily be bound to a function that opens a terminal.  In
~/.sawfishrc (a symlink to ~/.sawfish/.sawfishrc):

(defun run-gnome-terminal ()
  (interactive)
  (system "gnome-terminal &"))

Then bind it on a key by middle-clicking the desktop background, and
selecting [Customize | Bindings...], then in the global-map, bind W-t to
the "Run gnome terminal" item.

-- 
Karl Hegbloom <karlheg at laclinux.com>
Los Alamos Computers, Technical Support