the weird thing though - it only happens sometimes. the programs using (n)curses - vim, less are affected, while bash only gets confused after i used one of those. Reproducible: Sometimes Steps to Reproduce: 1. start ratpoison, then xterm (e.g. 'C-t c' or 'C-t :xterm<RETURN>') 2. man less Actual Results: man page is 24 lines high Expected Results: man page should be as high as a terminal window it only happens sometimes and only on one of my computers - the one which i've set up the last. most of the system is from binary packages from livecd of gentoo-1.4-r4, except for ratpoison and ncurses. work around: change xterm font size up and down (i have ctrl-F1 ctrl-ESC setup for that, i don't remember the defaults (and i don't have key pad to find them with trieal and error ;) here's emerge info: Portage 2.0.49-r4 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.2.3, glibc-2.3.2-r1, 2.4.20-gentoo-r6) ================================================================= System uname: 2.4.20-gentoo-r6 i686 Pentium III (Coppermine) ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium3 -fprefetch-loop-arrays -funroll-loops -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/qmail/control /usr/share/config /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium3 -fprefetch-loop-arrays -funroll-loops -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs sandbox ccache buildpkg" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="ruby perl esd gtk ldap x86 oss apm acpi cjk cscope directfb -arts avi -berkdb -crypt cups encode -foomaticdb -gdbm gif -gpm gtk2 imlib -java jpeg -kde -gnome -libg++ -libwww mad mikmod mmx -motif mpeg ncurses nls oggvorbis opengl pam pdflib png python -qt quicktime readline sdl slang -spell -ssl svga -tcpd truetype X -xml2 -xmms xv zlib"
What version of ratpoison are you using? 1.2.2-r1?
not even -r1, 1.2.2 will installing 1.3.0_beta3-r1 help? i'll try now but i've got dialup internet and damn slow laptop, don't expect the results too soon ;)
installed 1.3.0_beta3-r1, bug seems to be gone (but i can't be sure for it wasn't reliable and consistent bug like those in the old days:)
oops, right after i reported that bug's gone it's back. just like i said - it's not always the case...
Sorry for the lack of response, been rather busy lately. A couple things i've noticed with this. 1) This only happens for me with the initial xterm. Additional xterms do not seem to have this problem. 2) In the xterm, if you run the reziae command, it seems to fix this problem. 3) If you have a .ratpoisonrc file, this problem doesn't seem to happen. Is this the same for you?
I haven't seen this longstanding bug since updating to ratpoison-1.3.0_rc1. I think the bug was with an xterm that was opened immediately after a program that was not also an xterm. In case it comes back, the ratpoison "redisplay" command, which is normally bound to C-t l and C-t C-l, is the workaround suggested in the info page.
Ok, the bug's still there. I found a thread on freshmeat where the author attributes the bug to a race condition in xterm. I guess it's a race between the xterm processing the maximize command from ratpoison and setting the COLUMNS and LINES environment variables in the shell to the default 80x24. The comment I'm referring to is at http://freshmeat.net/projects/ratpoison/?topic_id=56
workaround: 1. start ratpoison 2. start xterm (e.g. "^T c") 3. issue redisplay command (e.g. "^T l") 4. issue the following in xterm: "echo "XTerm*geometry: ${COLUMNS}x${LINES}" >> ~/.Xresources" of course the .Xresources should be loaded ("xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources") on X startup but most people have that bit setup. i do for example, although i can't find where - must be default behaviour of gentoo's xinit.
As this is not a Gentoo bug, I'm marking it as resolved:upstream (meaning it's a software vendor's problem).