Re: INFORMAL SUMMARY OF INFORMAL SURVEY: blinking cursor

[Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn@glug.org>]

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

> 1: Every non-silly combination of shape and blinkability of the
> cursor is needed and loved by some people, and equally hated by
> other people.

i suppose this is not surprising.  as there are as many (or more)
points of view as there are states of mind, there are, as well,
that many "points in view".  and even one "out of view":

as an experiment, i have done:

  (modify-frame-parameters (selected-frame)
     '((cursor-type . (bar . 0))))

this is quite relaxing in lisp/scheme buffers (thanks mic![1]),
but not so friendly in dired and other modes.  this piece of
advice makes things a little easier:

(defadvice set-mark-command (before briefly-show-cursor activate)
  "Set the cursor shape to a box for a second, then to a zero-height bar."
  (flet ((jam (type) (modify-frame-parameters 
                      (selected-frame) `((cursor-type . ,type)))))
    (jam 'box)
    (sit-for 1)
    (jam '(bar . 0))))

i would like to make this into a standalone command, bound to
LSHIFT+RSHIFT (or perhaps any SHIFT key hit twice w/in 250msec),
but haven't figured out yet how to achieve the latter.  probably
involves delving into ratpoison innards...

thi


[1] http://www.glug.org/people/ttn/software/personal-elisp/dist/
         lisp/low-stress/turn-on-mic-paren.el