Cursor change on loss of focus

Cursor change on loss of focus

[william.m.miller]

I'm using Emacs 21.3.50.1 under Cygwin/X.  If I have more
than one Emacs window open (within a single X window) and
move the focus from one to the other, the one that has focus
has a blinking block cursor and the one without focus has an
empty block cursor.

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)?  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.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Re: Cursor change on loss of focus

[Daniel Brockman]

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>

Re: Cursor change on loss of focus

[Tim X]

Daniel Brockman <daniel@brockman.se> writes:

> 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>
>

I'm using Emacs 21.4 under Sawfish on a Debian Sid box - no bloated
gnome support!

I seem to get the behavior you have requested without modification -
the cursor is a blinking red box if the window is active and a hollow
empty box if it is not (I've set my cursor to be red). I've set
sawfish so that the window with the mouse pointer has the focus. 

I'd suspect it could be cygwin which is the problem, but cannot
substantiate that.

Tim

-- 
Tim Cross
The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is
to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you 
really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out!