Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

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