Re: How to get rid of the mouse pointer ?

on Fri, Apr 18, 2003 at 04:54:54PM +0200, Tomas Styblo wrote:
>
> I see no reason to display a mouse pointer on a device controlled
> by touch-screen and stylus. It's annoying and gets in the way. No
> other GUI for touch-screen based devices displays it (Opie,WinCE..).
>
> Matchbox and xkbd manage to hide it, but other GPE apps do not.
>

The way its currently done is quite brutal and doesn't always work - one
feature with X is every window can have its own cursor settings
independent of anything else ( for example terms get there little bar
cursor ).

As you've suggested we could hack strait into the XServer some
extension for completely hiding/unhiding the cursor - however this
could be quite some work.

With X 4.3 we now how themeable alpha blended XCursors. A simple
solution to this problem maybe to simple create a completely
transparent cursor theme and set this as the theme when no cursors are
wanted. Because of the way new XCursors are implemented, this should
just *work* with all apps.

All it needs is someone to create a completely transparent theme.

Some random tips on doing this;

- ipkg install libxcursor-themes-handhelds
- have a look at /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/icons/
- man xcursorgen
- see http://handhelds.org/~mallum/downloadables/experimental/xcursor-notes.html
- There are some 3rd party created themes on kdelook.org

However currently, to change the theme on the fly may require a
login/logout - I not 100% sure about this.

  -- Matthew
Received on Sat Apr 19 2003 - 09:06:13 EDT