[xmonad] Getting back my Gnome mouse pointer

[Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH]

On Mar 4, 2008, at 13:01 , Magnus Therning wrote:

> Try xsetroot.
>
> Hmm, I was just assuming that 'xsetroot -cursor_name left_ptr'  
> wouldn't work, but it did.  Should really learn to try things  
> before complaining.  Not really sure why this happens though, all  
> the other comix cursors get set just fine, only left_ptr that's  
> ugly after logging in.


Most of the GNOME (and KDE) substitute cursors are (possibly  
animated) pixmap replacements for normal bitmap cursors, and can't be  
managed by the server directly but are managed on the fly by looking  
at the server-level cursor that has been requested; the substitution  
is based on the standard cursor name, so you need to set the root  
window (== system default) cursor to the expected left_ptr for the  
default substitute cursor to be recognized and installed.

(An X11 extension to support animated pixmap cursors directly would  
obviate this but doesn't seem to be in the works.)

-- 
brandon s. allbery [solaris,freebsd,perl,pugs,haskell] allbery at kf8nh.com
system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] allbery at ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university    KF8NH