Invisible mouse cursor with black background

Invisible mouse cursor with black background

[William Morris]

I am using Emacs 23.3.1 on OS-X with the background set to black.

The mouse cursor when over text is a thin I-beam, perhaps two pixels wide, black and white.  Needless to say it is almost invisible and in bright ambient light, completely invisible.  How can I change the colour and/or shape of the pointer (preferably both)?

I had a similar problem on the terminal and was able to replace the I-beam resource file with one I created myself. I'm hoping something similar is possible for Emacs.

Thanks
--
William Morris

GNU Emacs 23.3.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin, NS apple-appkit-1038.36) of 2011-12-13 on bob.porkrind.org

Re: Invisible mouse cursor with black background

[Bernardo]

> The mouse cursor when over text is a thin I-beam, perhaps two pixels wide, black and white.  Needless to say it is almost invisible and in bright ambient light, completely invisible.  How can I change the colour and/or shape of the pointer (preferably both)?
> 
> I had a similar problem on the terminal and was able to replace the I-beam resource file with one I created myself. I'm hoping something similar is possible for Emacs.

did you try setting the cursor-type variable?
,----
| cursor-type is a variable defined in `C source code'.
| Its value is t
|
|   Automatically becomes buffer-local when set in any fashion.
|
| Documentation:
| Cursor to use when this buffer is in the selected window.
| Values are interpreted as follows:
|
|   t 		  use the cursor specified for the frame
|   nil		  don't display a cursor
|   box		  display a filled box cursor
|   hollow	  display a hollow box cursor
|   bar		  display a vertical bar cursor with default width
|   (bar . WIDTH)	  display a vertical bar cursor with width WIDTH
|   hbar		  display a horizontal bar cursor with default height
|   (hbar . HEIGHT) display a horizontal bar cursor with height HEIGHT
|   ANYTHING ELSE	  display a hollow box cursor
|
| When the buffer is displayed in a non-selected window, the
| cursor's appearance is instead controlled by the variable
| `cursor-in-non-selected-windows'.
`----

as for colour, i have this in my .emacs:
,----
| (setq default-frame-alist
|       '((foreground-color . "black")
|         (cursor-color     . "Coral")
|         ; .... other settings
|         ))
`----

Re: Invisible mouse cursor with black background

[Bernardo]

>> The mouse cursor when over text is a thin I-beam, perhaps two pixels 
>> wide, black and white.  Needless to say it is almost invisible and in 
>> bright ambient light, completely invisible.  How can I change the 
>> colour and/or shape of the pointer (preferably both)?
>>
>> I had a similar problem on the terminal and was able to replace the 
>> I-beam resource file with one I created myself. I'm hoping something 
>> similar is possible for Emacs.
> 
> did you try setting the cursor-type variable?

i must be tired, just realised the question is about the *mouse* pointer


> 
> as for colour, i have this in my .emacs:
> ,----
> | (setq default-frame-alist
> |       '((foreground-color . "black")
> |         (cursor-color     . "Coral")
> |         ; .... other settings
> |         ))
> `----
> 

(mouse-color . "Coral")
should work above

for the shape have a look at
M-: (info "(Elisp)Pointer Shape")