X11-big-cursor MINIHOWTO
 How to use enlarged mouse cursors with the X window system
 Jrg Schneider <mailto:[email protected]>
 v2, 11 August 1997

 This document describes how to use enlarged mouse cursors with the X
 window system.
 ______________________________________________________________________

 Table of Contents


 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
       7.1.1 Setting up 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) <http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/>.

 The master <http://i11www.ira.uka.de/~schneid/X11-big-cursor/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 <mailto:[email protected]> 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.

 1. 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
    <http://i11www.ira.uka.de/~schneid/X11-big-cursor/cursor.bdf>).

 2. 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 <http://i11www.ira.uka.de/~schneid/X11-big-
    cursor/bdfresize-1.4.tar.gz>):

         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

 3. 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
 <http://i11www.ira.uka.de/~schneid/X11-big-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.

 4. 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

 5. leave your X session and restart.

 That's it--now 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)--that 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 path--this
    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 :0) 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 0.5s.

   use XRecolorCursor to change the mouse cursor color every 0.1s

 A more demanding project would be mouse trails  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).


 7.1.1.  Setting up a font server

 Read the manual pages fs(1), fslsfonts(1) (or xfs(1), xfslsfonts(1)
 under X11R6) and try it--it 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.

You are viewing proxied material from ftp.icm.edu.pl. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.