bug#53890: 29.0.50; feature request: cursor color as a foreground color

bug#53890: 29.0.50; feature request: cursor color as a foreground color

[Jose A Ortega Ruiz]

Hi,

right now, when using alpha-background, the cursor is set to the opacity
of the background (i think that is because, as documented, only the
:background attribute of the face is used). that means that, if one sets
'alpha-background to 0 to make the background transparent, the cursor
becomes invisible when not over a character (and really difficult to
spot even when over one), no matter its colour (i've tried with pgtk and
no-toolkit builds).

Am i missing an existing setting to avoid that problem, or perhaps doing
something wrong? if not, it'd be nice to have the option of making the
cursor behave as foreground (perhaps by honouring :foreground in its
face, if set), so that one could have a fully transparent background and
a cursor visible at all times.

thanks,
jao


In GNU Emacs 29.0.50 (build 12, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, cairo version 1.16.0)
 of 2022-02-09 built on rivendell
Repository revision: 59ff15e3502e44d7ae7ea23cd882fc18a766d989
Repository branch: master
Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12014000
System Description: Debian GNU/Linux bookworm/sid

Configured using:
 'configure --prefix=/usr/local/stow/emacs --with-x-toolkit=no
 --with-imagemagick'

Configured features:
ACL CAIRO DBUS FREETYPE GIF GLIB GMP GNUTLS GPM GSETTINGS HARFBUZZ
IMAGEMAGICK JPEG JSON LCMS2 LIBOTF LIBSELINUX LIBSYSTEMD LIBXML2
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THREADS TIFF X11 XDBE XIM XPM ZLIB

Important settings:
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  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix

Major mode: notmuch-hello

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Load-path shadows:
/home/jao/lib/elisp/org-static-blog/org-static-blog hides /home/jao/.emacs.d/elpa.29/org-static-blog-20220110.739/org-static-blog
/home/jao/etc/emacs/site/custom hides /usr/local/stow/emacs/share/emacs/29.0.50/lisp/custom
/home/jao/.emacs.d/elpa.29/transient-20220130.1941/transient hides /usr/local/stow/emacs/share/emacs/29.0.50/lisp/transient

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Memory information:
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-- 
All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that
the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if
you can’t get them together again, there must be a reason. By all
means, do not use a hammer. —IBM Manual, 1925

bug#53890: 29.0.50; feature request: cursor color as a foreground color

[Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

Jose A Ortega Ruiz <jao@gnu.org> writes:

> Hi,
>
> right now, when using alpha-background, the cursor is set to the opacity
> of the background (i think that is because, as documented, only the
> :background attribute of the face is used). that means that, if one sets
> 'alpha-background to 0 to make the background transparent, the cursor
> becomes invisible when not over a character (and really difficult to
> spot even when over one), no matter its colour (i've tried with pgtk and
> no-toolkit builds).
>
> Am i missing an existing setting to avoid that problem, or perhaps doing
> something wrong? if not, it'd be nice to have the option of making the
> cursor behave as foreground (perhaps by honouring :foreground in its
> face, if set), so that one could have a fully transparent background and
> a cursor visible at all times.

It doesn't make much sense for `alpha-background' to affect the cursor
for the reasons you have mentioned.

Please try a build '--without-cairo' (and also without PGTK) and see if
that solves the problem.

Thanks.

bug#53890: 29.0.50; feature request: cursor color as a foreground color

[Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Jose A Ortega Ruiz <jao@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> right now, when using alpha-background, the cursor is set to the opacity
>> of the background (i think that is because, as documented, only the
>> :background attribute of the face is used). that means that, if one sets
>> 'alpha-background to 0 to make the background transparent, the cursor
>> becomes invisible when not over a character (and really difficult to
>> spot even when over one), no matter its colour (i've tried with pgtk and
>> no-toolkit builds).
>>
>> Am i missing an existing setting to avoid that problem, or perhaps doing
>> something wrong? if not, it'd be nice to have the option of making the
>> cursor behave as foreground (perhaps by honouring :foreground in its
>> face, if set), so that one could have a fully transparent background and
>> a cursor visible at all times.
>
> It doesn't make much sense for `alpha-background' to affect the cursor
> for the reasons you have mentioned.
>
> Please try a build '--without-cairo' (and also without PGTK) and see if
> that solves the problem.

Or alternatively just try master.  I fixed it there for the regular
cairo build.

bug#53890: 29.0.50; feature request: cursor color as a foreground color

[Jose A Ortega Ruiz]

On Wed, Feb 09 2022, Po Lu via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors" wrote:


[...]

> Or alternatively just try master.  I fixed it there for the regular
> cairo build.

yes, it's working for me too.  thanks for the quick fix!

cheers,
jao
-- 
When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is
about to set. -Lin Yutang, writer and translator (1895-1976)

bug#53890: 29.0.50; feature request: cursor color as a foreground color

[Jose A Ortega Ruiz]

related to this, and just thinking out loud: alpha-background is still
applied to the :background attributes of all (?) other faces, which of
course makes sense in general.  but i can imagine cases where having the
option to avoid alpha-background in some other selected faces
(e.g. hilite) would be useful (basically, for the same reason it's
useful for the cursor face).  in other words, i think having a
customizable list of faces whose background is preserved would be a
useful feature.

thanks,
jao
-- 
That man who dares to waste one hour of time, has not
discovered the value of life.
 - Charles Darwin

bug#53890: 29.0.50; feature request: cursor color as a foreground color

[Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

(Sorry for the late reply, this got caught up in a spam filter.)

Jose A Ortega Ruiz <jao@gnu.org> writes:

> related to this, and just thinking out loud: alpha-background is still
> applied to the :background attributes of all (?) other faces, which of
> course makes sense in general.  but i can imagine cases where having the
> option to avoid alpha-background in some other selected faces
> (e.g. hilite) would be useful (basically, for the same reason it's
> useful for the cursor face).  in other words, i think having a
> customizable list of faces whose background is preserved would be a
> useful feature.

I do eventually want to extend the existing color machinery to handle an
alpha channel, but that will have to wait.

Feel free to open a wishlist issue about this, thanks.

bug#53890: 29.0.50; feature request: cursor color as a foreground color

[Jose A Ortega Ruiz]

On Fri, Feb 18 2022, Po Lu via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors" wrote:

> (Sorry for the late reply, this got caught up in a spam filter.)

no problem at all.  please let me know if there's anything unusual in my
emails that would cause that.

[...]

> I do eventually want to extend the existing color machinery to handle an
> alpha channel, but that will have to wait.
>
> Feel free to open a wishlist issue about this, thanks.

done: bug#54059.

thanks a lot,
jao
-- 
Lisp has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in
thinking previously impossible thoughts. —Edsger Dijkstra

bug#53890: 29.0.50; feature request: cursor color as a foreground color

[Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

Jose A Ortega Ruiz <jao@gnu.org> writes:

> no problem at all.  please let me know if there's anything unusual in my
> emails that would cause that.

It's probably not something on your side, it apparently happens to
everyone at random.

> done: bug#54059.

Thanks.

bug#53890: 29.0.50; feature request: cursor color as a foreground color

[Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

Jose A Ortega Ruiz <jao@gnu.org> writes:

> On Wed, Feb 09 2022, Po Lu via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors" wrote:
>
>
> [...]
>
>> Or alternatively just try master.  I fixed it there for the regular
>> cairo build.
>
> yes, it's working for me too.  thanks for the quick fix!
>
> cheers,
> jao

I'm closing this bug then, thanks for testing.