Cannot set mouse pointer / cursor color on Mac OS X (10.9)

Cannot set mouse pointer / cursor color on Mac OS X (10.9)

[Joe Matarazzo]

Running Emacs.app, the "Official release" from emacsformacosx.com, I have
been unable to find any way to change the color of the I-beam cursor used
when the pointer hovers over text in the Emacs buffer. I'm using a dark
color scheme (black background) and the I-beam provided by the system,
which is a black I-beam with some transparency around it, is nearly
impossible to see.

I've tried:

(set-mouse-color "white")

and

(setq default-frame-alist '((mouse-color . "white")))

and

(set-face-background 'mouse "white")

all of which indicate that they should set the mouse pointer color, but to
no avail.

Thanks for the help,
Joe

Re: Cannot set mouse pointer / cursor color on Mac OS X (10.9)

[Joe Matarazzo]

Looks like I can brute-force a solution by recompiling from source, and modify
nsfns.m like so:

  NSImage *joeIbeam = [NSImage imageNamed:@"joeIbeam"];
  f->output_data.ns->text_cursor = [[NSCursor alloc] initWithImage:joeIbeam
                                                                              hotSpot:NSMakePoint(4,7)]; 
// f->output_data.ns->text_cursor = [NSCursor IBeamCursor];

where joeIbeam.tiff is a simple copy of the system ibeam with the black pixels
replaced by something bright and garish. :)

After rebuilding and copying Emacs into the Applications/Emacs.app hierarchy,
along with joeIbeam.tiff into the Resources part of said hierarchy, I got my
wish. Nice ugly but very visible text cursor.

FWIW, there are comments in the source as well that set-mouse-color doesn't have
an implementation path on nextstep. So I guess it's this or nothing.

Joe

Re: Cannot set mouse pointer / cursor color on Mac OS X (10.9)

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

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() Joe Matarazzo <joe.matarazzo@gmail.com>
() Tue, 29 Jul 2014 05:43:56 +0000 (UTC)

   So I guess it's this or nothing.

nIt seems you are comfortable reading/compiling source code.
Why not contribute the missing ‘set-mouse-color’ support?

-- 
Thien-Thi Nguyen
   GPG key: 4C807502
   (if you're human and you know it)
      read my lisp: (responsep (questions 'technical)
                               (not (via 'mailing-list)))
                     => nil

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Re: Cannot set mouse pointer / cursor color on Mac OS X (10.9)

[Joe Matarazzo]

Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn <at> gnu.org> writes:

> 
> nIt seems you are comfortable reading/compiling source code.
> Why not contribute the missing ‘set-mouse-color’ support?
> 

After some digging around it looks like you can manipulate cursors
with some image filtering on Quartz. I'll take a look and see if I can
make something work.