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-X11-big-cursor MINIHOWTO<subtitle >How to use enlarged mouse cursors with the X window system
-
-
-
-----
-
-!!!X11-big-cursor MINIHOWTO
-
-!!How to use enlarged mouse cursors with the X window system
-
-!!
-Joumlrg Schneiderv2, 11 August 1997
-
-
-----
-''This document describes how to use enlarged mouse cursors with the X
-window system.''
-----
-
-
-
-
-!!1. Introduction
-
-
-
-
-!!2. About this document
-
-
-
-
-!!3. How to do it
-
-
-
-
-!!4. Notes and limitations
-
-
-
-
-!!5. Technical discussion
-
-
-
-
-!!6. Other ideas how to make the mouse cursor more visible
-
-
-
-
-!!7. Related info
-
-
-*7.1 How to use a font server
-
-*7.2 How to get the bdf source for some font
-
-----
-
-!! 1. Introduction
-
-
-There are several reasons why the standard X mouse cursors are hard to
-track for some people:
-
-
-* when running X on a notebook with low contrast LCD
-*
-
-* on normal screens when using high resolution, 1600x1280 e. g.
-*
-
-* for visually impaired persons even on normal hardware
-*
-
-
-
-In all cases it might help to use enlarged mouse cursors. Ideally this
-job should be done by a single X program that automatically enlarges
-every mouse cursor.
-
-
-To my knowledge there is no simple way to write a utility like this,
-because the X protocol has no provision to query mouse cursors. For
-more details see section
-Technical discussion below.
-
-
-If we aim for a less general goal, though, something can be done:
-
-
-There is a set of standard mouse cursors that can be found in the
-cursor font (try xfd -fn cursor to look at it). Most programs use
-these mouse cursors and the key idea is to replace the standard cursor
-font with an enlarged version.
-
-
-
-----
-
-!!2. About this document
-
-
-The motivation for this MINIHOWTO was a visually impaired co-student
-who asked me how to enlarge the mouse cursor under X. After I found
-out how this can be done, I wrote an initial version of this
-document. The knowledge about the method described
here does not seem
-to be common, so I decided to share it and submitted this document as
-a Linux MINIHOWTO, despite the fact that it is
-''not specific to Linux at all''. As all other MINIHOWTOs it can be
-found in the home of of the
-Linux Documentation Project (LDP).
-
-
-The
-master of
-this document is maintained in the SGML/linuxdoc format. This makes it
-possible to automatically provide versions in the following formats
-(which can be found in the same place as the master): html, text,
-LaTeX, DVI, !PostScript, GNU info.
-
-
-
-Shinobu Miyata has
-done a Japanese translation of this MINIHOWTO. It can be found in
-http://i11www.ira.uka.de/~schneid/jp/X11-big-cursor/.
-
-
-
-----
-
-!! 3. How to do it
-
-
-Follow the steps detailed below. If you don't want to get and compile
-the bdfresize package yourself, you can skip to step 3 and download a
-magnified font instead of creating it.
-
-
-# get cursor.bdf, the source of the cursor font, from some X
-distribution, e. g. from
-ftp://ftp.x.org/pub/R6.3/xc/fonts/bdf/misc/cursor.bdf (if you don't
-find it there try an archie search or get it from
-my copy).
-#
-
-# get, compile and install the bdfresize package from
-ftp://ftp.cs.titech.ac.jp/X11/contrib/Local/bdfresize-1.4.tar.Z
-(or from
-my copy):
-
-zcat bdfresize-1.4.tar.Z | tar xf -
-cd bdfresize-1.4
-xmkmf
-make
-
-On Linux you probably have to use:
-
-make CCOPTIONS='-include /usr/include/bsd/bsd.h' clean all
-
-
-#
-
-# create a directory and install a magnified cursor font in it
-(magnification factor 2 in this example):
-
-mkdir $HOME/fonts
-bdfresize -f 2 cursor.bdf | bdftopcf >$HOME/fonts/cursor2.pcf
-mkfontdir $HOME/fonts
-
-I have prepared some
-cursor fonts
-with the following magnification factors: 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 4, 5,
-6, 7, 8 and 16. You can download one of them an copy it to
-$HOME/fonts if you don't want to use bdfresize.
-
-#
-
-# modify your .xinitrc or .xsession file: before
-any X client (that uses cursors) is started the following
-commands must be executed:
-
-xset +fp $HOME/fonts
-xsetroot -cursor_name X_cursor
-
-
-#
-
-# leave your X session and restart.
-#
-
-
-
-That's itmdashnow all mouse cursors should have doubled in size.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-----
-
-!! 4. Notes and limitations
-
-
-
-
-
-* X servers may have a limit for the maximum cursor
-size, especially if they use a hardware implementation for the mouse
-cursor. Others do not have such a limit. E. g. XF86_S3 3.3
-works even with a 512x512 mouse cursor (rather slowly).
-*
-
-* The magnified cursor font must have the same name as the original
-font (the ''font name'' must be cursor, ''file name'' does not
-matter)mdashthat is no problem as bdfresize does not change
-the font name.
-*
-
-* The directory with the new cursor font must be placed before the
-directory with the standard cursor font in the the font pathmdashthis
-is accomplished with xset +fp (as opposed to
-xset fp+).
-*
-
-* Changes in $HOME/fonts/ will be visible only
-after the command mkfontdir $HOME/fonts; xset fp rehash
-and only in newly
-started X clients (more exactly: for newly created cursors).
-*
-
-* xset +fp path may not work on a X-Terminal. In this case
-a font server (see the section
-How to use a fontserver)
-can be used if supported by the X-Terminal or some
-other method to install the font on the X-Terminal (this can
-generally only be done by your system administrator).
-*
-
-* The same approach can be used for olcursor and
-decw$cursor fonts and any other cursor font you may
-encounter.
-*
-
-* Cursor fonts produced by bdfresize don't look smooth,
-especially at larger magnification factors. It would be nice if
-someone could create better looking handcrafted version at
-some common sizes.
-*
-
-
-
-
-----
-
-!! 5. Technical discussion
-
-
-Is it possible to write a X program that enlarges cursors
-automatically?
-
-
-
-
-; __(Partial) solution 1__:
-
-Use the XTestCompareCursor from the XTEST
-extension. For all windows that the mouse pointer enters compare the
-cursor of this window with a set of `known' cursors (e. g. from
-the cursor font). If the cursor is found, replace it with an enlarged
-version, otherwise either leave it alone or substitute a standard
-cursor. This will only work where the XTest extension is available.
-
-
-
-; __Solution 2__:
-
-Write a proxy X server that relays all client requests
-unchanged to the real X server, except that it intercepts all requests
-corresponing to the XCreate*Cursor Xlib
-functions. XCreate*Cursor requests should be modified to use
-an enlarged cursor.
-
-
-This proxy server simulates a new display, e. g. :1. All
-clients that connect to this display (e. g. xterm -display
-:1) are displayed on the real server (normally :) and their
-mouse cursors are enlarged automatically. The mouse cursors of clients
-that connect to :0 will remain ''unchanged''.
-
-
-
-
-----
-
-!! 6. Other ideas how to make the mouse cursor more visible
-
-
-Here are some ideas for rather simple X programs that might make
-mouse cursors easier to track.
-
-
-
-
-
-* When a hot key is pressed display something (big cursor, small
-window, shaped window) at pointer position for .5s.
-*
-
-* use XRecolorCursor to change the mouse cursor color every .1s
-*
-
-
-
-A more demanding project would be __mouse trails__ agrave la
-windoze, i. e. when the mouse is moved and the mouse cursor needs
-to be drawn in a different position, then the old mouse cursor does
-not disappear at once, but after a short delay. Mouse trails would be
-probably best implemented in a X server, but it might be feasible to
-do it as a X client, or better as a proxy server (see section
-Technical discussion for details).
-
-
-
-----
-
-!! 7. Related info
-
-!! 7.1 How to use a font server
-
-
-
-A font server is a net service that provides a set of X11 fonts
-with a simple protocol. It can be queried which fonts it provides and
-will supply the font bitmap data on request.
-
-
-You might want to use a font server to provide the X server with a
-modified cursor font, instead of telling it where to find the font on
-the file system.
-
-
-This method is especially handy if you use several machines that don't
-share a common file system or if you use X terminals that support
-the font server protocol.
-
-
-A font server program and associated tools comes with the X11R5+
-distribution (AFAIK).
-
-
-
-
-! Setting up a font server
-
-
-Read the manual pages ''fs(1)'', ''fslsfonts(1)'' (or
-''xfs(1)'', ''xfslsfonts(1)'' under X11R6) and try itmdashit isn't
-hard. Say, you are running the server on host some.host.edu
-on port 7100. You can test the setup with the command
-
-
-fslsfonts -server some.host.edu:7100
-
-
-To actually use the server issue the command
-
-
-xset +fp tcp/some.host.edu:7100
-
-
-which should return without an error message.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-!! 7.2 How to get the bdf source for some font
-
-
-
-If you have set up a font server simply use fstobdf which
-comes with the font server.
-
-
-Alternatively you may try getbdf which can dump any installed
-X11 font to a bdf file
.
-
-
-
-----
+Describe [HowToXBigCursor]
here.
