Replacing the I-beam cursor system wide.

[Thomas Dickey]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2011, Gene Heskett wrote:

> On Tuesday, January 18, 2011 05:17:14 pm Thomas Dickey did opine:
>
>> On Tue, 18 Jan 2011, James Cloos wrote:
>>>>>>>> "r" == rhubarbpieguy  <rhubarbpieguy at gmail.com> writes:
>>> r> Is it possible to replace the I-beam cursor system wide through X?
>>>
>>> Sure.  You need to change the (server-side) cursor font used by older
>>> applications and also change the cursor theme used by most newer apps.
>>>
>>> Google should point to decent explanations of how to do those.
>>>
>>> You probably want to start by editing your favourite cursor theme
>>> to use something other than a I-beam in that spot (I beleive that
>>> cursor's name is 'xterm') and re-generate it.  You may find that
>>> to be sufficient for your needs.
>>
>> man xterm (resources)
>>
>>         pointerMode (class PointerMode)
>>                 Specifies when the pointer may be hidden as the user
>> types.  It will be redisplayed if the user moves the mouse, or clicks
>> one of its buttons.
>>
>>                 0  never
>>
>>                 1  the  application  running  in  xterm has not
>> activated mouse mode.  This is the default.
>>
>>                 2  always.
>>
>>         pointerShape (class Cursor)
>>                 Specifies the name of the shape of the pointer.  The
>> default is "xterm."
>
> That it is, but where is the list and description of the other options so
> that we can make considered choices?

The list is buried away in X's documentation (as suggested, google can 
help).  Since you want a smaller cursor, I also pasted in the part of
xterm's manpage which shows that you can hide the cursor - that's simpler.

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net