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acampbell

Member

Registered: 2013-05-15

Posts: 46

Mouse cursor size - SOLVED

I need a larger mouse coursor for visibility.

The wiki says to use "Xcursor.theme" and "Xcursor.size" in .Xresources. I cannot get either of these to work.  I can select the cursor appearance with "xterm*pointerShape" but that does not help with the size. Are there any larger cursors available anywhere?

~/.Xresources is sourced by xrdb in ~/.xinitrc

If it makes any difference, I don't use a desktop manager; just spectrwm as window manager.

Last edited by acampbell (2013-06-10 14:12:34)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,330

Website

Re: Mouse cursor size - SOLVED

cursor size, I believe, only applies to cursor files using libxcursor.  See the -xcf option of xsetroot to use it.

I just confirmed this works, though information on what an "x cursor file" is is sparse.  The simplest was to install xcursor-themes from [extra].  This includes many good cursor files in /usr/share/icons/whiteglass/cursors.   Once installed, try the following

xsetroot -xcf /usr/share/icons/whiteglass/cursors/left_ptr 32

or change the 32 to adjust the size.

Note that some client windows (mostly terminals and text fields) define their own cursors; these will not be changed by this setting.

Last edited by Trilby (2013-06-10 11:50:14)

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

acampbell

Member

Registered: 2013-05-15

Posts: 46

Re: Mouse cursor size - SOLVED

That certainly ought to work, but it doesn't here. I never get any of the cursors I choose, just a plain  capital I.

This is xterm.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,330

Website

Re: Mouse cursor size - SOLVED

This is xterm.

That's why.  Xterm sets it's own cursor.  This changes the "default" cursor which will show when the mouse is over an empty workspace, the statusbar, or any client program that doesn't set the cursor itself.

To change this for programs that set the cursors themselves, you'd need to redefine the x11 cursor font.  I suspect cursor themes do this - but I've never used them.  If you know any C, it should be pretty easy to do this replacement.

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

acampbell

Member

Registered: 2013-05-15

Posts: 46

Re: Mouse cursor size - SOLVED

Thanks for the clarification. I do know a little C (enough to modify dwm) so I may look into that idea later. Meanwhile, in spectrwm I'm switching back and forth from tiled to floating when I need to find the cursor, which is an acceptable compromise.