Re: Cursor change on loss of focus

[Daniel Brockman <daniel@brockman.se>]

william.m.miller@gmail.com writes:

> I'm using Emacs 21.3.50.1 under Cygwin/X.

[...]

> Is there a way to turn the blinking block cursor into an empty block
> cursor when I move the focus to a different X window (i.e., a
> different, non-Emacs application)?

This already works for me with both the latest CVS snapshot Emacs and
the Debian-packaged Emacs 21, using ratpoison and XFree86 4.3.0.
I don't remember if this also works in GNOME (or with other window
managers), but it seems extremely unlikely that there would be such an
annoying-yet-simple problem with what is probably(?) the most common
environment in which people use Emacs (i.e., GNOME/Linux).

> I can't count the number of times I've started typing Emacs
> keystrokes to other programs, intending to work with the text in my
> Emacs window, and I think it's because I subconsciously key on the
> blinking block cursor to recognize which window is going to receive
> my keystrokes, rather than looking at the color of the window's
> title bar.

This has happened several times to me too; it's really annoying.
Indeed, under ratpoison, the cursor is the ONLY way to tell which
window is active, and I've found that XTerm or Emacs sometimes get
confused as to which window is active and which is inactive, most
often resulting in both cursors being filled.  I think this happens to
Emacs more often than it happens to XTerm (I'm not even sure that it
happens to XTerm at all); in any case, it happens *very* rarely.

> Any suggestions would be appreciated.

By far the most likely cause of the problem is the Cygwin X server.
Unfortunately, I don't know enough about X to be able to guess what
the exact problem might be.

Do you have the same problem with other X applications, such as XTerm?

-- 
Daniel Brockman <daniel@brockman.se>