xterm: set mouse pointer type for ncurses

Tobias Girstmair tobi at isticktoit.net
Mon May 22 12:30:31 UTC 2017


First, thanks for all your replies. 

On Mon, May 22, 2017 at 01:29:24PM +0300, Marius Gedminas wrote:
> On Mon, May 22, 2017 at 11:43:24AM +0200, Henrik Pauli wrote:
> > I know you said it's a bit off-topic here, but I noticed something and thought
> > it might be related to Tobias's question.  In Konsole (and also in
> > mate-terminal), if I open mc (which I think is an ncurses application), the
> > mouse pointer changes to arrow (from the normal I-beam thing); however it does
> > not do so in xterm.  less also uses the alternative buffer just like mc, but
> > does not cause the pointer to change, so I guess it's not merely the terminal
> > mode change that triggers this behaviour in Konsole and mate-terminal.
This is what I wanted to say - GNOME Terminal, Konsole and others change
the cursor to an arrow, but xTerm doesn't. 

> 
> I would guess the terminal reacts this way to the application enabling mouse
> tracking:
> http://invisible-island.net/xterm/ctlseqs/ctlseqs.html#h2-Mouse-Tracking
This is the document I used to piece information together.

> 
> (Just like some terminals react to the application switching to the
> alternate screen by disabling the scrollbar and changing the mouse wheel
> to send up/down arrow key events instead of scrolling.)
> 
> > Is this perhaps some feature that is missing from xterm then but exists in
> > Konsole/mate-terminal?
> 
> xterm supports mouse tracking, but doesn't change the mouse cursor to
> indicate this.
Bummer - But at least I know now. 
> 
> Marius Gedminas


Thanks to all of you for your help!

		tobias


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