Saving and Restoring Frame Sets

ratpoison provides two commands, fdump and frestore, that allow the user to save and restore frame configurations. Let's say, for example, you have split your desktop into several frames with some windows in these frames and now you want to quickly bring Emacs forward and browse some code (full-screen of course) then return to your funky frame configuration. You could use fdump to dump the frames, hit C-t Q to remove all frames, and then select your emacs window. When you've finished with emacs you could use frestore to restore the windows and frames.

If a frame contained a window when you dumped the frame layout but that window is not present when you restore the layout, the frame holding that window will be blank.

Calling fdump and frestore and copying and pasting the layout by hand each time is a bit cumbersome. There are some simple bindings in doc/sample.ratpoisonrc that allow you to save and restore frame layouts with the press of a key.

fdump screen-num

Command

Dump the current frame layout as text. Without an argument the current screen's frames are dumped. With an argument the screen-numth screen is dumped. See Multiple Monitors.

frestore frames

Command

Restore the frame layout based on the list of frames frames. frames should be the text that was printed after calling fdump.

undo

Command

Undo the last change of frame layout. This is especially helpful after a only command. One can step at most maxundos steps back in frame layout history.

redo

Command

redo the last change that was undone.