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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] cursors
  • Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2006 17:03:34 +0000 (UTC)

On Wed, 26 Apr 2006, Samual Acorn wrote:

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


Thanks. A long search on my own had not run across this file.
I already noticed that Pico and Links unset this cursor, but kermit/ssh has not affected it.

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...

My partner just asked about how to do a half-block in linux.

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?

Our three pentium laptops have color LCD. The red cursor worked on the Toshibas with passive matrix (one of which just stopped booting from hard drive and has a partition table problem) and I will try it on the Hitachi with active matrix. The blinking white rectangle worked on my TTL monitor and on a CRT VGA monitor. The red worked on the latter but was invisible on the former.

chips and technology 82c455 on this one, similar on the other Toshiba and something slightly better on the older Hitachi (will do 800 in X).

Thanks again, Sindi

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
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--
--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
--
_______________________________________________
BasLinux mailing list
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/baslinux


keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org




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