• Looking for X cursor theme with bigger or darker I-Beam

    From Chris Green@21:1/5 to All on Sun Nov 17 17:00:02 2024
    I'm running Debian 12 on two systems, on both of them I use large
    terminal (xfce4) windows quite extensively and I use a light grey
    background in the terminal windows.

    This means that the default X cursor isn't very visible when it's
    somewhere in one of the terminal windows and I often have trouble
    seeing it.

    So, do any of the cursor themes in xcursor-themes actually change the
    I-Beam cursor? I've looked at a couple of other sets of cursor themes
    and they don't change the I-Beam at all, they just change all the
    other ones.

    Alternatively a way to simply change the colour of the I-Beam would
    help, it's obviously designed to be most visible on a dark background.

    Please note this is the X/mouse cursor I'm talking about, not the text
    cursor that shows where you are entering text in a terminal window.

    --
    Chris Green
    ·

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  • From Dan Ritter@21:1/5 to All on Sun Nov 17 18:40:01 2024
    Chris Green wrote:

    Most terminals offer the ability to change the cursor color when
    the cursor is in them. In the settings for xfterminal, I'm
    pretty sure you can set that. Go look?

    -dsr-

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  • From Chris Green@21:1/5 to Dan Ritter on Sun Nov 17 19:20:01 2024
    Dan Ritter <[email protected]> wrote:
    Chris Green wrote:

    Most terminals offer the ability to change the cursor color when
    the cursor is in them. In the settings for xfterminal, I'm
    pretty sure you can set that. Go look?

    It's not the terminal cursor so I don't think the terminal can do
    anything aboout its colour.

    --
    Chris Green
    ·

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Dan Ritter@21:1/5 to Chris Green on Sun Nov 17 19:40:01 2024
    Chris Green wrote:
    Dan Ritter <[email protected]> wrote:
    Chris Green wrote:

    Most terminals offer the ability to change the cursor color when
    the cursor is in them. In the settings for xfterminal, I'm
    pretty sure you can set that. Go look?

    It's not the terminal cursor so I don't think the terminal can do
    anything aboout its colour.

    You might be correct, but right now, you're not expending the
    fractional effort necessary to find out.

    Nobody should be willing to spend more effort on solving your problem
    than you.

    -dsr-

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Darac Marjal@21:1/5 to All on Sun Nov 17 21:00:01 2024
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  • From Felix Miata@21:1/5 to All on Sun Nov 17 21:20:01 2024
    Chris Green composed on 2024-11-17 15:40 (UTC):

    I'm running Debian 12 on two systems, on both of them I use large
    terminal (xfce4) windows quite extensively and I use a light grey
    background in the terminal windows.

    This means that the default X cursor isn't very visible when it's
    somewhere in one of the terminal windows and I often have trouble
    seeing it.

    So, do any of the cursor themes in xcursor-themes actually change the
    I-Beam cursor? I've looked at a couple of other sets of cursor themes
    and they don't change the I-Beam at all, they just change all the
    other ones.

    I don't often use XFCE, so have no meaningful familiarity with its own settings.

    I use dmz-cursor-theme in Debian and elsewhere that offer it. It comes in various
    sizes, plus two colors, black and white.

    On Debian I typically add

    Xcursor.theme: DMZ-White
    Xcursor.size: 32

    to some file in /etc/X11/Xresources. 48 is about two+ rows tall on my 24" 1920x1200 screen @120DPI. White's I-beam is white in center, with border black, like pointer.
    --
    Evolution as taught in public schools is, like religion,
    based on faith, not based on science.

    Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

    Felix Miata

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  • From [email protected]@21:1/5 to Dan Ritter on Sun Nov 17 21:30:01 2024
    Dan Ritter <[email protected]> wrote:
    Chris Green wrote:
    Dan Ritter <[email protected]> wrote:
    Chris Green wrote:

    Most terminals offer the ability to change the cursor color when
    the cursor is in them. In the settings for xfterminal, I'm
    pretty sure you can set that. Go look?

    It's not the terminal cursor so I don't think the terminal can do
    anything aboout its colour.

    You might be correct, but right now, you're not expending the
    fractional effort necessary to find out.

    Nobody should be willing to spend more effort on solving your problem
    than you.

    That's insulting. Chris is quite right. Terminals commonly have the
    means to alter some attributes of the terminal cursor, but never the X
    cursor in my experience. I just checked the terminals I have and they
    don't. (I don't have xfterminal so maybe that is somehow an exception,
    but TBH I doubt it). It's up to you to clarify explicitly that you did understand we're talking about the X cursor and you did mean it, IMHO.

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    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Chris Green@21:1/5 to Felix Miata on Sun Nov 17 22:30:01 2024
    Felix Miata <[email protected]> wrote:
    Chris Green composed on 2024-11-17 15:40 (UTC):

    I'm running Debian 12 on two systems, on both of them I use large
    terminal (xfce4) windows quite extensively and I use a light grey background in the terminal windows.

    This means that the default X cursor isn't very visible when it's
    somewhere in one of the terminal windows and I often have trouble
    seeing it.

    So, do any of the cursor themes in xcursor-themes actually change the I-Beam cursor? I've looked at a couple of other sets of cursor themes
    and they don't change the I-Beam at all, they just change all the
    other ones.

    I don't often use XFCE, so have no meaningful familiarity with its own settings.

    I use dmz-cursor-theme in Debian and elsewhere that offer it. It comes in various
    sizes, plus two colors, black and white.

    On Debian I typically add

    Xcursor.theme: DMZ-White
    Xcursor.size: 32

    to some file in /etc/X11/Xresources. 48 is about two+ rows tall on my 24" 1920x1200 screen @120DPI. White's I-beam is white in center, with border black,
    like pointer.

    Aha, that is at least getting me in the right direction. If I simply
    change the Xcursor.size: setting in /etc/X11/Xresources/x11-common
    then the X cursor in **most** places changes size. However the cursor
    when moving across an xfce4-terminal window stays obstinately as a
    small, not very visible, I-Beam.

    So, I think there must be something in xfce4-terminal that's
    determining what X cursor is used. Ah, no, it seems to be the same
    for any terminal window. If I run an xterm then that, too, has to
    small cursor.

    There seems to be some way thet terminal windows override the X cursor
    size setting. So is there some X resource setting relating
    specifically to the X-window cursor size on a terminal window?

    I'll have a dig around the xterm man page and its X resources.

    --
    Chris Green
    ·

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  • From Charles Curley@21:1/5 to Chris Green on Sun Nov 17 22:30:01 2024
    On Sun, 17 Nov 2024 15:40:05 +0000
    Chris Green <[email protected]> wrote:

    So, do any of the cursor themes in xcursor-themes actually change the
    I-Beam cursor? I've looked at a couple of other sets of cursor themes
    and they don't change the I-Beam at all, they just change all the
    other ones.

    Yes. I get a nice big red cursor for most of my windows, except
    xfce4-terminal windows. But it's big and stands out nicely there.

    Here's what I do:

    apt install xcursor-themes galternatives

    Then use galternatives to update x-cursor-theme to point to
    redglass.theme. Then "xfce4-mouse-settings &" or settings-> mouse and touchpad-> theme to invoke redglass and set the cursor size to
    something large like 36.

    --
    Does anybody read signatures any more?

    https://charlescurley.com
    https://charlescurley.com/blog/

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  • From Chris Green@21:1/5 to Chris Green on Mon Nov 18 00:00:01 2024
    Chris Green <[email protected]> wrote:
    Charles Curley <[email protected]> wrote:
    On Sun, 17 Nov 2024 15:40:05 +0000
    Chris Green <[email protected]> wrote:

    So, do any of the cursor themes in xcursor-themes actually change the I-Beam cursor? I've looked at a couple of other sets of cursor themes and they don't change the I-Beam at all, they just change all the
    other ones.

    Yes. I get a nice big red cursor for most of my windows, except xfce4-terminal windows. But it's big and stands out nicely there.

    But the one thing I want to change is the X cursor in xfce4-terminal!


    Here's what I do:

    apt install xcursor-themes galternatives

    Then use galternatives to update x-cursor-theme to point to
    redglass.theme. Then "xfce4-mouse-settings &" or settings-> mouse and touchpad-> theme to invoke redglass and set the cursor size to
    something large like 36.

    Yes, works exactly as you say, big red cursors everywhere **except**
    for the I-Beam cursor when crossing terminal windows. As that's the
    only thing I want to do the above change doesn't help me much! :-)

    Not quite true! Although most of the cursor changes when you change
    cursor theme are immediate some changes don't happen unless you log
    out and then back in. There are even some changes that survive that
    and you actually have to power cycle the system to get the changes to
    be effective. In particular the appearance of the I-Beam cursor on
    terminal windows doesn't change unless you log out and back in.

    Thus I have managed to improve the visibility of the mouse cursor on
    terminal windows by changing to the DMZ (White) theme and increasing
    the cursor size a bit. It's still far from perfect, I'd really like a different shape for the pointer in this particular case but it's better.

    Thanks for all the help everyone and sorry if I got a bit grumpy at
    times.

    --
    Chris Green
    ·

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  • From Chris Green@21:1/5 to Charles Curley on Sun Nov 17 23:30:01 2024
    Charles Curley <[email protected]> wrote:
    On Sun, 17 Nov 2024 15:40:05 +0000
    Chris Green <[email protected]> wrote:

    So, do any of the cursor themes in xcursor-themes actually change the I-Beam cursor? I've looked at a couple of other sets of cursor themes
    and they don't change the I-Beam at all, they just change all the
    other ones.

    Yes. I get a nice big red cursor for most of my windows, except xfce4-terminal windows. But it's big and stands out nicely there.

    But the one thing I want to change is the X cursor in xfce4-terminal!


    Here's what I do:

    apt install xcursor-themes galternatives

    Then use galternatives to update x-cursor-theme to point to
    redglass.theme. Then "xfce4-mouse-settings &" or settings-> mouse and touchpad-> theme to invoke redglass and set the cursor size to
    something large like 36.

    Yes, works exactly as you say, big red cursors everywhere **except**
    for the I-Beam cursor when crossing terminal windows. As that's the
    only thing I want to do the above change doesn't help me much! :-)

    --
    Chris Green
    ·

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  • From [email protected]@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Mon Nov 18 06:40:02 2024
    On Sun, Nov 17, 2024 at 08:25:33PM +0000, [email protected] wrote:
    Dan Ritter <[email protected]> wrote:
    Chris Green wrote:
    Dan Ritter <[email protected]> wrote:
    Chris Green wrote:

    Most terminals offer the ability to change the cursor color when
    the cursor is in them. In the settings for xfterminal, I'm
    pretty sure you can set that. Go look?

    It's not the terminal cursor so I don't think the terminal can do anything aboout its colour.

    You might be correct, but right now, you're not expending the
    fractional effort necessary to find out.

    Nobody should be willing to spend more effort on solving your problem
    than you.

    That's insulting. Chris is quite right. Terminals commonly have the
    means to alter some attributes of the terminal cursor, but never the X
    cursor in my experience.

    Note that it is the terminal (or whatever application) who "tells" X
    what cursor to set when moving "over" some application's window. It
    is in the X11 protocol. This usually results in that "I-Beam" cursor.

    So to decide whether it's "insulting" or Dan actually has a point,
    you better read up in the reference below.

    Dan is talking about the X "cursor" (which we better call "pointer" to
    avoid confusion). Nobody's talking about the term cursor.

    Cheers

    [1] https://x.org/releases/current/doc/libX11/libX11/libX11.html#Cursor_Attribute
    --
    t

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  • From Eric S Fraga@21:1/5 to All on Mon Nov 18 11:00:01 2024
    Response below/inline for email Chris Green wrote:
    (original email sent 17 Nov 2024 at 21:13)

    Felix Miata <[email protected]> wrote:
    I use dmz-cursor-theme in Debian and elsewhere that offer it. It comes in various
    sizes, plus two colors, black and white.

    On Debian I typically add

    Xcursor.theme: DMZ-White
    Xcursor.size: 32

    [...]

    So, I think there must be something in xfce4-terminal that's
    determining what X cursor is used. Ah, no, it seems to be the same
    for any terminal window. If I run an xterm then that, too, has to
    small cursor.

    I've tried what Felix suggested and it works just fine with the X
    terminal emulator I use (lxterminal). The cursor is nice and big if I
    specify a size of 64.

    I've not tried other terminal emulators. My window manager is EXWM.

    --
    Eric S Fraga via gnus (Emacs 31.0.50 2024-07-16) on Debian 12.0

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  • From [email protected]@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Mon Nov 18 21:20:01 2024
    <[email protected]> wrote:
    On Sun, Nov 17, 2024 at 08:25:33PM +0000, [email protected]
    wrote:
    Dan Ritter <[email protected]> wrote:
    Chris Green wrote:
    Dan Ritter <[email protected]> wrote:
    Chris Green wrote:

    Most terminals offer the ability to change the cursor color
    when the cursor is in them. In the settings for xfterminal,
    I'm pretty sure you can set that. Go look?

    It's not the terminal cursor so I don't think the terminal can
    do anything aboout its colour.

    You might be correct, but right now, you're not expending the
    fractional effort necessary to find out.

    Nobody should be willing to spend more effort on solving your
    problem than you.

    That's insulting. Chris is quite right. Terminals commonly have the
    means to alter some attributes of the terminal cursor, but never
    the X cursor in my experience.

    Note that it is the terminal (or whatever application) who "tells" X
    what cursor to set when moving "over" some application's window. It
    is in the X11 protocol. This usually results in that "I-Beam" cursor.

    I am talking about attributes of the cursor, such as colours, not about
    the Cursor Attribute of a Window, as discussed in your reference.

    Once again, I know that many terminals offer the ability to change
    attributes of the terminal cursor, but none that can affect the
    attributes (colours) of the X cursor. And my belief is that Chris
    shares that same understanding so his response was reasonable.

    The X cursor font can be set by a command line argument when starting
    the X server. All a window does is choose which character within that
    font that is used over particular regions of its window(s).

    It is possible to select a larger font for the X cursor. Perhaps that
    may be a solution for Chris?

    So to decide whether it's "insulting" or Dan actually has a point,
    you better read up in the reference below.

    Dan is talking about the X "cursor" (which we better call "pointer" to
    avoid confusion). Nobody's talking about the term cursor.

    Cheers

    [1] https://x.org/releases/current/doc/libX11/libX11/libX11.html#Cursor_Attribute

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  • From [email protected]@21:1/5 to Chris Green on Mon Nov 18 21:40:01 2024
    Chris Green <[email protected]> wrote:
    Chris Green <[email protected]> wrote:
    Charles Curley <[email protected]> wrote:
    On Sun, 17 Nov 2024 15:40:05 +0000
    Chris Green <[email protected]> wrote:

    So, do any of the cursor themes in xcursor-themes actually
    change the I-Beam cursor? I've looked at a couple of other
    sets of cursor themes and they don't change the I-Beam at all,
    they just change all the other ones.

    Yes. I get a nice big red cursor for most of my windows, except xfce4-terminal windows. But it's big and stands out nicely there.

    But the one thing I want to change is the X cursor in
    xfce4-terminal!


    Here's what I do:

    apt install xcursor-themes galternatives

    Then use galternatives to update x-cursor-theme to point to redglass.theme. Then "xfce4-mouse-settings &" or settings-> mouse
    and touchpad-> theme to invoke redglass and set the cursor size to something large like 36.

    Yes, works exactly as you say, big red cursors everywhere **except**
    for the I-Beam cursor when crossing terminal windows. As that's the
    only thing I want to do the above change doesn't help me much! :-)

    Not quite true! Although most of the cursor changes when you change
    cursor theme are immediate some changes don't happen unless you log
    out and then back in. There are even some changes that survive that
    and you actually have to power cycle the system to get the changes to
    be effective. In particular the appearance of the I-Beam cursor on
    terminal windows doesn't change unless you log out and back in.

    I can believe that you need to restart the X server for some changes to
    take effect.

    Thus I have managed to improve the visibility of the mouse cursor on
    terminal windows by changing to the DMZ (White) theme and increasing
    the cursor size a bit. It's still far from perfect, I'd really like a different shape for the pointer in this particular case but it's
    better.

    Thanks for all the help everyone and sorry if I got a bit grumpy at
    times.

    TBH, if xfce4-terminal was giving me such grief, I'd simply switch to
    some other terminal program. It doesn't really matter which you use.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Chris Green@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Mon Nov 18 22:30:01 2024
    [email protected] wrote:
    Chris Green <[email protected]> wrote:
    Chris Green <[email protected]> wrote:
    Charles Curley <[email protected]> wrote:
    On Sun, 17 Nov 2024 15:40:05 +0000
    Chris Green <[email protected]> wrote:

    So, do any of the cursor themes in xcursor-themes actually
    change the I-Beam cursor? I've looked at a couple of other
    sets of cursor themes and they don't change the I-Beam at all,
    they just change all the other ones.

    Yes. I get a nice big red cursor for most of my windows, except xfce4-terminal windows. But it's big and stands out nicely there.

    But the one thing I want to change is the X cursor in
    xfce4-terminal!


    Here's what I do:

    apt install xcursor-themes galternatives

    Then use galternatives to update x-cursor-theme to point to redglass.theme. Then "xfce4-mouse-settings &" or settings-> mouse
    and touchpad-> theme to invoke redglass and set the cursor size to something large like 36.

    Yes, works exactly as you say, big red cursors everywhere **except**
    for the I-Beam cursor when crossing terminal windows. As that's the
    only thing I want to do the above change doesn't help me much! :-)

    Not quite true! Although most of the cursor changes when you change
    cursor theme are immediate some changes don't happen unless you log
    out and then back in. There are even some changes that survive that
    and you actually have to power cycle the system to get the changes to
    be effective. In particular the appearance of the I-Beam cursor on
    terminal windows doesn't change unless you log out and back in.

    I can believe that you need to restart the X server for some changes to
    take effect.

    Thus I have managed to improve the visibility of the mouse cursor on terminal windows by changing to the DMZ (White) theme and increasing
    the cursor size a bit. It's still far from perfect, I'd really like a different shape for the pointer in this particular case but it's
    better.

    Thanks for all the help everyone and sorry if I got a bit grumpy at
    times.

    TBH, if xfce4-terminal was giving me such grief, I'd simply switch to
    some other terminal program. It doesn't really matter which you use.

    I suspect that most of them will share the same ancestry (VTE) so it's difficult to escape! :-)

    It's not a really **major** issue for me anyway, most of the time I
    have no problems, it's just that occasionally I lose the X cursor and
    thus a larger and more visible one when it's on a terminal background
    would be handy.

    --
    Chris Green
    ·

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  • From Fred@21:1/5 to Chris Green on Tue Nov 19 01:30:01 2024
    On 11/18/24 14:17, Chris Green wrote:
    [email protected] wrote:
    Chris Green <[email protected]> wrote:
    Chris Green <[email protected]> wrote:
    Charles Curley <[email protected]> wrote:
    On Sun, 17 Nov 2024 15:40:05 +0000
    Chris Green <[email protected]> wrote:

    So, do any of the cursor themes in xcursor-themes actually
    change the I-Beam cursor? I've looked at a couple of other
    sets of cursor themes and they don't change the I-Beam at all,
    they just change all the other ones.

    Yes. I get a nice big red cursor for most of my windows, except
    xfce4-terminal windows. But it's big and stands out nicely there.

    But the one thing I want to change is the X cursor in
    xfce4-terminal!


    Here's what I do:

    apt install xcursor-themes galternatives

    Then use galternatives to update x-cursor-theme to point to
    redglass.theme. Then "xfce4-mouse-settings &" or settings-> mouse
    and touchpad-> theme to invoke redglass and set the cursor size to
    something large like 36.

    Yes, works exactly as you say, big red cursors everywhere **except**
    for the I-Beam cursor when crossing terminal windows. As that's the
    only thing I want to do the above change doesn't help me much! :-)

    Not quite true! Although most of the cursor changes when you change
    cursor theme are immediate some changes don't happen unless you log
    out and then back in. There are even some changes that survive that
    and you actually have to power cycle the system to get the changes to
    be effective. In particular the appearance of the I-Beam cursor on
    terminal windows doesn't change unless you log out and back in.

    I can believe that you need to restart the X server for some changes to
    take effect.

    Thus I have managed to improve the visibility of the mouse cursor on
    terminal windows by changing to the DMZ (White) theme and increasing
    the cursor size a bit. It's still far from perfect, I'd really like a
    different shape for the pointer in this particular case but it's
    better.

    Thanks for all the help everyone and sorry if I got a bit grumpy at
    times.

    TBH, if xfce4-terminal was giving me such grief, I'd simply switch to
    some other terminal program. It doesn't really matter which you use.

    I suspect that most of them will share the same ancestry (VTE) so it's difficult to escape! :-)

    It's not a really **major** issue for me anyway, most of the time I
    have no problems, it's just that occasionally I lose the X cursor and
    thus a larger and more visible one when it's on a terminal background
    would be handy.

    Hi,

    Why don't you just change the background, maybe just a little, to make
    the existing cursor more visible?

    Best regards,
    Fred

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  • From Jonathan Dowland@21:1/5 to All on Tue Nov 19 11:20:01 2024
    I'm not aware of an existing theme that provides an I-bar that you
    describe, but, I found writing my own cursor theme (in my case to
    override just the pointer) relatively straightforward, so I would
    encourage you to try. The themes can inherit from others so you would
    only need to describe the I-bar in yours.

    https://jmtd.net/log/amiga_pointer/

    --
    Please do not CC me for listmail.

    👱🏻 Jonathan Dowland
    [email protected]
    🔗 https://jmtd.net

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  • From Christoph Brinkhaus@21:1/5 to All on Wed Nov 20 14:50:01 2024
    Dear community,
    Am Mon, Nov 18, 2024 at 09:57:18AM +0000 schrieb Eric S Fraga:
    Response below/inline for email Chris Green wrote:
    (original email sent 17 Nov 2024 at 21:13)

    Felix Miata <[email protected]> wrote:
    I use dmz-cursor-theme in Debian and elsewhere that offer it. It comes in various
    sizes, plus two colors, black and white.

    On Debian I typically add

    Xcursor.theme: DMZ-White
    Xcursor.size: 32

    [...]

    So, I think there must be something in xfce4-terminal that's
    determining what X cursor is used. Ah, no, it seems to be the same
    for any terminal window. If I run an xterm then that, too, has to
    small cursor.

    I have had the cursor of the dmz-theme when using xterm.
    With xfce4-terminal I have faced the same situation as Chris.
    The cursor has been the tiny one.

    I've tried what Felix suggested and it works just fine with the X
    terminal emulator I use (lxterminal). The cursor is nice and big if I specify a size of 64.

    It might make a difference which gtk-version is used by the terminal.
    With Debian-Bookwork any change in terminalrc did not help, too.

    Finally I experimented with the files in /usr/share/icons.
    There is an directory /usr/share/icons/default. It references
    cat /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme
    [Icon Theme]
    Inherits=Adwaita

    Just for testing with almost no hope I renamed the directory to /usr/share/icons/ddefault which seems to deactivate some default stuff.
    May be there is an official way to deactivate the default icon theme.
    If yes, this should be the way to go.

    After this change the cursor of the dmz-theme has been available running xfce4-terminal. The configuration is in ~/.Xresources as below.

    Xcursor.theme:DMZ-White
    Xcursor.size:48

    Kind regards,
    Christoph
    --
    Ist die Katze gesund
    schmeckt sie dem Hund.

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  • From Karl Vogel@21:1/5 to Chris Green on Thu Dec 5 11:20:03 2024
    Sorry, I'm a bit behind on mail.

    On Sun 17 Nov 2024 at 10:50:31 (-0500), Chris Green wrote:
    I'm running Debian 12 on two systems, on both of them I use large
    terminal (xfce4) windows quite extensively and I use a light grey
    background in the terminal windows. This means that the default X
    cursor isn't very visible when it's somewhere in one of the terminal
    windows and I often have trouble seeing it.

    Alternatively a way to simply change the colour of the I-Beam would
    help, it's obviously designed to be most visible on a dark background.

    http://shallowsky.com/linux/x-cursor-themes.html has some good tips.
    I use these settings for a nice visible plus-sign cursor in .Xdefaults:

    ! XTerm*pointerShape: double_arrow works, but is confusing when you
    ! try to lengthen a given window vertically.
    XTerm*pointerShape: plus
    XTerm*pointerColor: blue
    XTerm*pointerColorBackground: red

    Please note this is the X/mouse cursor I'm talking about, not the text
    cursor that shows where you are entering text in a terminal window.

    Since I prefer black text on a white background, I found a blue cursor
    to be more visible:

    XTerm.VT100*cursorColor: blue

    Some other settings I've found useful:

    ! scrollback buffer lines - 65535 is max on most machines
    ! (64 is default)
    XTerm*saveLines: 20000

    ! Some OS versions get this wrong.
    XTerm.VT100*termName: xterm-color

    ! Xterm should do jump scrolling. Normally, text is scrolled one
    ! line at a time; this option allows xterm to move multiple lines at
    ! a time so that it does not fall as far behind. Its use is strongly
    ! recommended since it makes xterm much faster.
    XTerm*jumpScroll: true

    ! An xterm should be a login shell that honors .profile and
    ! generally initializes the shell environment the way you expect.
    ! I have no idea why the default is to not do this.
    XTerm*loginShell: true

    ! Xterm may scroll asynchronously, meaning that the screen does not
    ! have to be kept completely up to date while scrolling. This allows
    ! xterm to run faster.
    XTerm*multiScroll: true

    ! Uncomment this to use color for underline attribute
    XTerm.VT100*colorULMode: on
    XTerm.VT100*underLine: off

    ! Uncomment this to use color for the bold attribute
    XTerm.VT100*colorBDMode: on

    Hope this helps.

    --
    Karl Vogel I don't speak for anyone but myself

    Please whitelist *.playboy.com because one of the law firm partners who
    signs the paychecks "likes to read the articles".
    --Reddit "unusual IT support tickets", 5 Nov 2024

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  • From Chris Green@21:1/5 to Karl Vogel on Thu Dec 5 14:20:01 2024
    Karl Vogel <[email protected]> wrote:
    Sorry, I'm a bit behind on mail.

    On Sun 17 Nov 2024 at 10:50:31 (-0500), Chris Green wrote:
    I'm running Debian 12 on two systems, on both of them I use large
    terminal (xfce4) windows quite extensively and I use a light grey background in the terminal windows. This means that the default X
    cursor isn't very visible when it's somewhere in one of the terminal windows and I often have trouble seeing it.

    Alternatively a way to simply change the colour of the I-Beam would
    help, it's obviously designed to be most visible on a dark background.

    http://shallowsky.com/linux/x-cursor-themes.html has some good tips.
    I use these settings for a nice visible plus-sign cursor in .Xdefaults:

    ! XTerm*pointerShape: double_arrow works, but is confusing when you
    ! try to lengthen a given window vertically.
    XTerm*pointerShape: plus
    XTerm*pointerColor: blue
    XTerm*pointerColorBackground: red

    Please note this is the X/mouse cursor I'm talking about, not the text cursor that shows where you are entering text in a terminal window.

    Since I prefer black text on a white background, I found a blue cursor
    to be more visible:

    XTerm.VT100*cursorColor: blue

    Some other settings I've found useful:

    ! scrollback buffer lines - 65535 is max on most machines
    ! (64 is default)
    XTerm*saveLines: 20000

    ! Some OS versions get this wrong.
    XTerm.VT100*termName: xterm-color

    ! Xterm should do jump scrolling. Normally, text is scrolled one
    ! line at a time; this option allows xterm to move multiple lines at
    ! a time so that it does not fall as far behind. Its use is strongly
    ! recommended since it makes xterm much faster.
    XTerm*jumpScroll: true

    ! An xterm should be a login shell that honors .profile and
    ! generally initializes the shell environment the way you expect.
    ! I have no idea why the default is to not do this.
    XTerm*loginShell: true

    ! Xterm may scroll asynchronously, meaning that the screen does not
    ! have to be kept completely up to date while scrolling. This allows
    ! xterm to run faster.
    XTerm*multiScroll: true

    ! Uncomment this to use color for underline attribute
    XTerm.VT100*colorULMode: on
    XTerm.VT100*underLine: off

    ! Uncomment this to use color for the bold attribute
    XTerm.VT100*colorBDMode: on

    Sadly xfce4-terminal doesn't know about X resources at all so adding
    stuff to .Xdefaults isn't going to change anything.

    --
    Chris Green
    ·

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