[OS X Emacs] Aquamacs cursor

[siemsen at ucar.edu]

Paul,

Perhaps you have the same problem I have.  If so, it only affects you if you like a dark window background.

There are actually two "cursors" in Aquamacs - the text cursor, which represents Emacs "point", and the mouse cursor, which moves when you move the mouse.  For me, the text cursor is a quite visible yellow bar, and can be controlled as David and Nathaniel suggest.  I have no problem with it.

The mouse cursor is a different beast.  For me, it is a dark grey shape like a capital "I" when the mouse is over text, and it is an arrow when the mouse is not over text.  Yes, the mouse curser changes shape as I move it about an Aquamacs window.  When over text, the dark grey "I" is quite hard to see against a dark background.  I can find it only by moving the mouse and hunting for the tiny interactions between the "I" and parts of individual characters in the Aquamacs window.  The "I" is only one pixel wide, so parts of it appear only when a few of its pixels interact with a few pixels of individual characters.  It's quite irritating, especially when I try to select a character string with the mouse.

As I write this message, I'm using Apple's Mail.app, which has a white background.  I notice that the mouse cursor is the same "I" shape, and works very well against the white background.  So this isn't a problem for people who use light-colored backgrounds for all their windows.  I decided long ago that I definitely don't want to stare into a bright light all day long, so I sot apps to dark backgrounds when I can.

As far as I can tell, this is the one GUI attribute of Aquamacs that can't be controlled.  I posted to this list several months ago about the problem.  As I remember, it isn't an easy problem to fix.

-- Pete


On Jul 1, 2010, at 11:39 AM, David Reitter wrote:

> On Jul 1, 2010, at 1:37 PM, <prathouz at uchicago.edu> <prathouz at uchicago.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Hi All -- In Aquamacs 2.0, how can I make the cursor a bit brighter or wider? It is a grey line as is and I am having a bit of trouble finding it easily.  Is there an adjustment fro this? Which customization group is it in?  Thx.  -- pr
> 
> The variable is `cursor-type'.  The width is limited, but that should have changed in more current nightly builds.
> You can usually find such variables by doing C-h v and then using completion (e.g. type "cursor-", press TAB twice); Aquamacs also has a nice Apple Help manual (look up the Emacs manual or the Emacs Lisp Reference), which is, as of 2.0, reliably searchable.
> 
> - David
> 
> 
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