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["Samual Acorn" <sam.acorn AT gmail.com>]

i and more than likely your indian friend as well (at least somewhere
up the chain) pulled the examples right from the bottom of
"VGA-softcursor.txt" (documentation usually provided with large
distros)

http://fxr.watson.org/fxr/source/Documentation/VGA-softcursor.txt?v=linux-2.4.22

three bitmapped parameters set using an escape sequence... (dont worry
about the kernel version mentioned in the link above)

"\033[" is the 'escape' "?foo;foo;fooc" is the sequence... the
starting question mark and ending 'c' are needed...  note that this is
just as easy to unset as it is to set... (ceartain software like links
pine or just about anything else will most likely 'unset' what you
set)

the file isnt exactly very... well written but the first parameter is
what kind of cursor you want (size of the hardware cursor or the use
of a 'software'[read; nonblinking] cursor) the second is the registers
in the VGA card for the color of the cursor and the third is a toggle
of the 2nd parameters bits that were set... so... since my memory on
direct writes to textmode VGA is -very- rusty here are some
attempts... (note this is with an ATI mach 64 card... others may act
different)

(all are black and white.. or should be..)
echo -e '\033[?17;127c'  -- an 'inverted' 'transparent' nonblinking
block cursor...
echo -e '\033[?4c'  -- a 'halfsized' blinking block...
echo -e '\033[?88;15c'  -- eye-burning bright white blinking block....
cant miss it...
echo -e '\033[?17;255c' -- nonblinking 'transparent' block that blinks
the character that it sits on...
echo -e '\033[?18;127;8c' -- nonblinking 'transparent' block with
blinking underline...
echo -e '\033[?18;255;8c' -- .... if this doesnt get your attention i
dont know what will... (nonblinking 'transparent' block... blinking
the character its over - over an underline that blinks at twice the
rate....)


granted these were half cooked 'fly by the seat of my pants' examples
but i would need to get a calculator and some docs on the vga (or some
old sourcecode) out to do much else...


curious; what type of laptop display is this? color/monochrome (if
monochrome is it strictly "black or white" or does it do greyscale?)?
passive/active-matrix?


On 25/04/06, sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Apr 2006, Samual Acorn wrote:
>
> > type; echo -e '\033[?6c'
> > enjoy...
>
> It worked perfectly and I am using a blinking white rectangle now in VT3.
> Following instructions I just received from someone in India who joined my
> local bbs, in VT4 I typed echo -e '\033[?17;0;64c' and I have a
> nonblinking red cursor that I can see the white text through.  I will
> experiment to see which is more readable.  I can probably also change the
> text color with tset.
>
> Which parts of the above make the cursor rectangular, blinking or not, and
> red?
> >
> > On 24/04/06, sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:
> >> How can I change from a blinking underline hardware cursor to a more
> >> visible square cursor so I can find the cursor on my laptop, especially
> >> with a slow internet connection where it can take 10 sec for the cursor 
> >> to
> >> respond to a keystroke?
> >>
> >> All I could find was someone's C++ program to change cursor color and
> >> blinking and shape, where they commented that this would be useful for
> >> finding cursors on laptops.  This was for 'linux 1.0 or 2.0'.  I hope BL
> >> already has some way to change cursors.
> >>
> >> Mac cursors can be set up with a red halo, in GUI mode.
> >>
> >> keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
> >> SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> BasLinux mailing list
> >> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/baslinux
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > --sam
> > http://mephitus.renamon.org/
> > "When you've done something right, no one will be sure you've done
> > anything at all." -- Futurama
> > --
> > _______________________________________________
> > BasLinux mailing list
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/baslinux
> >
>
> keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
> SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
> _______________________________________________
> BasLinux mailing list
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/baslinux
>


--
--sam
http://mephitus.renamon.org/
"When you've done something right, no one will be sure you've done
anything at all." -- Futurama
--