Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3784 mails)

[(Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 20-Oct-01 Ted Harding wrote:
> 
> Hi Folks,
> 
> I'd like to change the default "top_left_arrow" of
> the mouse pointer in X.

OK, I sussed out a bit of info.

1. For xterm, you can do

  xterm -xrm "*pointerShape <arrowname>"

where <arrowname> is, by default, top_left_arrow
and can be one of the names you can find by doing

  strings /usr/X11R6/lib/libXt.so.6.0

and choosing any name in the list which starts

  xterm  watch  ...  X_cursor

2. I got further clues from the "xv" manual, which I have
as

  /usr/share/doc/packages/xv/xvdocs.ps.gz

Towards the end, it describes a command-line option on the
lines of

  xv -cursor <number>

where <number> is the number of the cursor shape in the
X font "cursor". You can see these shapes (crudely) by
doing

  xfd -fn cursor

and get their numbers from the displayed grid.

3. However, this will not really do for what I want.
First, none of them is conspicuous enough. Secondly,
how to change the cursor is application specific (see above)
and for some applications (such as acroread) you don't seem
to get a choice anyway.

4. So what I'm REALLY after, I guess, is a conspicuous
pointer-shaped image which can be started up in its
own right and moved bodily around the screen independently
of the actual mouse cursor itself (just like you can with
"xteddy", if you know that delightful little program).
That would do nicely.

So, again, any suggestions?

Thanks again,
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 167 1972
Date: 20-Oct-01                                       Time: 21:36:18
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