New Screen capabilities using Screenwm

[Paul Kolano]

hi all,

Just thought some of you might be interested in a new project I
started on Sourceforge called Screenwm.  It's basically a single Perl
executable and a set of key bindings that adds some new capabilities
to Screen.  It is meant to work with Bill Pursell's excellent vertical
split patch (although it also works without).  The major features are:

1. Multiple region layouts within a single session

As a simple example, you might have one layout that has 2 horizontally
split regions and another that has 2 vertically split regions.  With
Screenwm, you can switch between them instantaneously using
layout-specific versions of the next, prev, other, and select
commands.  Layouts can be arbitrarily complex.

2. Vi-like movement within complex layouts

When using vertical splits, it might take any number of focus up/down
commands to reach a region that is right next to the current one.
Screenwm has bindings for left/right movement as well as up/down
movement that automatically calculate region boundaries and move
directly to the region in the given direction with a single key press.

3. Window associations by region

Essentially, each region is treated as if it has its own set of
windows associated with it.  Thus, even though you might have 30
windows in a given Screen session, the next, prev, and select commands
will cycle through only the windows that are associated with the
current region instead of all 30 of them.  I find this more natural
than the default model, especially with vertical splits, as it is
essentially equivalent to multiple xterms (or whatever) side by side
with each running its own instance of Screen (but with no need to use
the mouse! :) ).

4. Control of remote/embedded sessions using standard key bindings

Since using different escape keys for remote Screen sessions is a
pain, this allows windows to be tagged as a remote/embedded session,
after which commands sent to the local session will be forwarded on
automatically when appropriate.  For example, when working in a tagged
window, and you want to create a new window in the remote session, you
just use ^ac as normal instead of ^aac.  You can customize the
behavior to forward on only the commands that you want forwarded.
Basically, this feature allows you to treat multiple local and remote
Screen sessions as a single seamlessly integrated session.

Anyway, check it out if you're interested at:

   http://sourceforge.net/projects/screenwm

--Paulsc