Mouse cursor size

[Tim Writer]

John McGregor <mr.mcgregor-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org> writes:

> My mother (79 yr. old) got her first computer recently, on which I installed
> Mandrake 9.2 and selected KDE. She really likes it, however she sometimes has
> a problem seeing the mouse cursor even when the larger one supplied by KDE is
> selected. I searched through Google and there are some mentions of editing
> the .Xresources file, but on closer examination that doesn't seem to make a
> lot of sense. I also looked in /usr/share/applnk and while the mouse is
> referenced there are no configuration files that can be edited for effect.
> 
> 
> The KDE site wasn't a lot of help either.
> 
> I'm hoping that there is someone on this list that has encountered this
> problem and can point me in the right direction.

Yep, this was covered in the recent thread about xterm.  Try adding this to
her ~/.Xresources:

    ! Set to true to revert to old fashioned cursors
    Xcursor.core:   false
    ! Available themes are redglass, whiteglass, and default (currently an
    ! alias for whiteglass.
    Xcursor.theme:  redglass

which will make the pointer a translucent red instead of the translucent
white default.  Alternatively, use:

    Xcursor.core:   true

in which case, the theme is ignored and X reverts to the old fashioned
behaviour (fully opaque cursors which can usually be controlled by
pointerColor resources [the defaults are usually reasonable]).

These resources may be usefult:

    http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/RELNOTES2.html#5
    http://www.cs.umn.edu/help/linux/xcursor.html

BTW, this is only for XFree86 4.3.0 or higher.  If you're using something
older than that, this is not the problem.

-- 
tim writer <tim-s/rLXaiAEBtBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org>                                  starnix inc.
905.771.0017 ext. 225                           thornhill, ontario, canada
http://www.starnix.com              professional linux services & products
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