Blinking Cursor hard to see. (Solved)

[Subito Piano]

Hi all -- I can load different mouse pointers easily enough through JWM Desk Manager, but they all seem to utilize the same cursor when typing -- you know, the thin little line shape, sometimes in the shape of a capital I. Maybe it's my 6-decade old eyes....but is there a FAT cursor that can be installed?

Thanks....

[Flash]

I use a cursor theme called Whitelarge because it is the largest pointer and fattest cursor I could find. At 380 kB, the theme is too large to attach to this post, but there might be a link to it somewhere in the forum.

[Semme]

Unpack, then place in ~/.icons before selecting within JWMDesk.

[MochiMoppel]

is there a FAT cursor that can be installed?

I doubt that you can change the text cursor (the text cursor in a GUI app, not a terminal, right?). AFAIK your best bet is to press the Insert key and change temporarily to the fat overwrite cursor. At least this will help you to locate the cursor.

[Semme]

Ah.. when typing!

[MochiMoppel]

Probably that's what he means. But I see now that shape and "fatness" of the overwrite cursor depends very much on the application: A blinking underline in Geany, same shape but red in Abiword, somewhat fatter but same shape in Opera etc.

Another way to find a lost text cursor, especially in long documents when the document has been scrolled and the insertion point is no more visible: Shift+RightArrow will jump to the text cursor and start a selection. Hard to miss.

[Subito Piano]

Actually, it worked! It's not huge, but it's taller and a little fatter. The problem was that when I had full-screen web pages full of text or working on a document in full-screen and needed to move my mouse, the mouse pointer changed from an arrow to that capital-I-shaped cursor (I'm not talking about the blinking cursor inside the text when I'm typing, but what I see when moving the mouse). I could move my mouse all over the screen for a while before I could finally see it -- now it's MUCH easier to see.
Also -- good clue about how to bring the cursor front and center. Problem solved, this is great. Thanks, guys!

[Flash]

Are you saying the Whitelarge cursor from Semme solved your problem?

[Subito Piano]

Yes, it's a lot more visible. The only "issue" is that when it becomes the "capital I" cursor (for lack of a better term), it has no white outline and in certain spots blends in with my dark theme. Easy enough to either change my theme or live with it. So yes and thanks!

And Flash (especially, since you are a moderator) and Semme and MochiMoppel -- you guys are all over this forum. Thanks for all you time and work with Puppy and its users. You're a big part of the reason it is and stays a great distro.

[musher0]

Hello all.

If I may add a note about the cursor in the (u)rxvt console.
Which I don't think would be off-topic.

The console cursor has even more of a visibility problem than the one
in X.

My solution is to use the following parameters, that influence the color
and general appearance of the cursor (aka the "pointer" in console
parlance):

Code: Select all

COLR="bg black -fg snow -uc -bc -cr gold -pr snow -pr2 yellow +pb";urxvt -$COLR

The (bg) and (fg) parameters affect the background and foreground colors
you wish to give to your console.

The other parameters affect the blinker and pointer. As you can see,
there is an "underline" blinker (-uc) in gold color (-cr gold), and the colors
used to fatten the pointer are (-pr snow -pr2 yellow).

I discovered that using one darker color and one brighter color is no good
to get the pointer to stand out, since one of the contrasting colors will get
assimilated with the background. Both the -pr and -pr2 colors have to
provide contrast with the background plus between themselves.

I mention this tip because the docs are not terribly clear about it (IMO).

Please see the result in attached capture.

IHTH.

[bigpup]

I am not sure if all Puppies have this.
Usually have to run this from terminal.

Code: Select all

urxvtcontrol

Gives all kinds of options for the urxvt terminal.

[Subito Piano]

The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.

You just proved yourself right. But at least YOU'VE told us all now!!!

[musher0]

I am not sure if all Puppies have this.
Usually have to run this from terminal.

Code: Select all

urxvtcontrol

Gives all kinds of options for the urxvt terminal.

Thanks, bigpup.

Yes, that panel is useful to some extent.

But if you observe closely, it does not offer options for coloration of /
contrast in / the pointer.

BFN.

[Subito Piano]

I use RoxTerm rather than urxvt -- its adjustable preferences include whether to use I-beam, block, or underline for the cursor/pointer -- the block is extremely visible. (I use Roxterm-1.17.1-Lucid in Xenial pup just for the GTK-2 theme, which matches Puppy.)