(Un?)Customizing Cursor?

(Un?)Customizing Cursor?

[Tim Visher]

In related news...

Another small nitpick that I have between my two illustrious
installations is that my cursor behaves differently.  When I learned
Emacs long ago in Terminal.app, I grew to expect the cursor to behave
in a certain way.  When it was over white space, it would be a filled
box.  When it was over a character, it would reverse video and I could
see the character despite the box being full.  My windows install
works exactly as I expect.  On my mac, however, I currently have an
empty box because if I set it to be a solid box (via the preferences),
it simply covers over the text I'm trying to edit.  This simply won't
do.  I'd like to have the same functionality that I do on my Windows
box on my Mac.

I looked into the 'Easy Customization' section of the manual but I
couldn't get the customizations there to really do anything.

Anyway, as always, thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

-- 

In Christ,

Timmy V.

http://burningones.com/
http://five.sentenc.es/ - Spend less time on e-mail

Re: (Un?)Customizing Cursor?

[harven]

"Tim Visher" <tim.visher@gmail.com> writes:

> In related news...
>
> Another small nitpick that I have between my two illustrious
> installations is that my cursor behaves differently.  When I learned
> Emacs long ago in Terminal.app, I grew to expect the cursor to behave
> in a certain way.  When it was over white space, it would be a filled
> box.  When it was over a character, it would reverse video and I could
> see the character despite the box being full.  My windows install
> works exactly as I expect.  On my mac, however, I currently have an
> empty box because if I set it to be a solid box (via the preferences),
> it simply covers over the text I'm trying to edit.  This simply won't
> do.  I'd like to have the same functionality that I do on my Windows
> box on my Mac.
>
> I looked into the 'Easy Customization' section of the manual but I
> couldn't get the customizations there to really do anything.
>
> Anyway, as always, thoughts?
>
> Thanks in advance!

If you are launching emacs in a Terminal.app, that's the terminal 
that takes care of the cursor. And it seems pretty limited, from
what I can see. On your windows box, emacs probably starts in its
own window, hence there are more options available.

You may want to install some windowed version of emacs on your mac, either
CarbonEmacs, Emacs.app or Aquamacs. It takes only a few minutes
and you will recover a nice cursor, among over things.
See the wiki for a discussion of the different flavors of emacs under
macosx    http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS

Another workaround is to use another terminal than Apple Terminal.app.
If Apple X11 is installed, you can just use a basic xterm and the cursor
behaves as expected.

Re: (Un?)Customizing Cursor?

[Tim Visher]

On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 9:22 AM, harven <harven@free.fr> wrote:

> If you are launching emacs in a Terminal.app, that's the terminal
> that takes care of the cursor. And it seems pretty limited, from
> what I can see. On your windows box, emacs probably starts in its
> own window, hence there are more options available.

Sorry, I know where the misunderstanding came in.  I was trying to say
that I originally learned Emacs at the console.  I don't use it there
anymore.  However, whether on the console or off, the default cursor
has always been solid while off text, box with reverse video while
over.

> You may want to install some windowed version of emacs on your mac, either
> CarbonEmacs, Emacs.app or Aquamacs. It takes only a few minutes
> and you will recover a nice cursor, among over things.
> See the wiki for a discussion of the different flavors of emacs under
> macosx    http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS
>
> Another workaround is to use another terminal than Apple Terminal.app.
> If Apple X11 is installed, you can just use a basic xterm and the cursor
> behaves as expected.
>

I'm running Emacs.app (GNU Emacs 23.0.60.1 (i386-apple-darwin9.5.0,
*Step 9.0rc3)) at home on my Mac and the default windows binary
download at work (I believe that's 22).

-- 

In Christ,

Timmy V.

http://burningones.com/
http://five.sentenc.es/ - Spend less time on e-mail

Re: (Un?)Customizing Cursor?

[harven]

"Tim Visher" <tim.visher@gmail.com> writes:

> On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 9:22 AM, harven <harven@free.fr> wrote:
>
>> If you are launching emacs in a Terminal.app, that's the terminal
>> that takes care of the cursor. And it seems pretty limited, from
>> what I can see. On your windows box, emacs probably starts in its
>> own window, hence there are more options available.
>
> Sorry, I know where the misunderstanding came in.  I was trying to say
> that I originally learned Emacs at the console.  I don't use it there
> anymore.  However, whether on the console or off, the default cursor
> has always been solid while off text, box with reverse video while
> over.
>
>> You may want to install some windowed version of emacs on your mac, either
>> CarbonEmacs, Emacs.app or Aquamacs. It takes only a few minutes
>> and you will recover a nice cursor, among over things.
>> See the wiki for a discussion of the different flavors of emacs under
>> macosx    http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS
>>
>> Another workaround is to use another terminal than Apple Terminal.app.
>> If Apple X11 is installed, you can just use a basic xterm and the cursor
>> behaves as expected.
>>
>
> I'm running Emacs.app (GNU Emacs 23.0.60.1 (i386-apple-darwin9.5.0,
> *Step 9.0rc3)) at home on my Mac and the default windows binary
> download at work (I believe that's 22).

I don't use Emacs.app so I can't really help here.
Try starting emacs without loading your init file (emacs -Q),
the problem is perhaps there. I can see that there are reports
of cursor bugs on the Emacs.app dev mailing list, but they should
be solved in the last version.