[xmonad] Re: [PATCH] XMonad: set the default root cursor to XC_left_ptr

[Andres Salomon]

On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:07:19 +0200
Matthias Kilian
<kili at outback.escape.de> wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 02:55:20PM -0400, Andres Salomon wrote:
> > > You can always set the cursor from your .xsession or .xinitrc
> > > using xsetroot(1) before starting xmonad (or any other window
> > > manager).
> > 
> > Yep, and some display managers also set it.  However, my opinion is
> > that xmonad should be setting it.  If people feel differently, I'd
> > like to hear why.
> 
> Well, because you can set it elsewhere, and some people may want
> to use another cursor. The natural way to do so is to configure
> your X startup scripts, because it's WM independent.

I'm not sure what you mean here.  Are people really setting cursors via
xsetroot, and feel strongly about it?  Is setting a string in
your .xinitrc really what people consider "the natural way" to
configure pointers (versus a GUI app like
gnome-appearance-properties)?  I should point out that in a lot of
instances, it's not even clear where such a thing would be set.  For
example, while 'startx' on my debian system allows me to run xsetroot
via ~/.xinitrc, 'nodm' completely ignores .xinitrc (making
cursor override documentation such as the stuff at
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xmonad pretty useless).

If your argument is that the cursor should be allowed to be overridden,
I believe you.  In the case of the desktop environment, it can override
the cursor as it normally does.  In the case of no desktop environment,
where you might want to override the cursor, I would think that being
able to do so via xmonad would be a _lot_ more useful versus having to
figure out which particular X init script you should be modifying or
creating.

I can certainly change the code to allow users to override the cursor
via ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs, for example.

> 
> Why add code to xmonad when it's not necessary?

Because it provides a default.  It's not a large amount of
code at all, and it's pretty clear what it's doing.  Why make the
unnecessary call out to xsetroot at X start time when it can easily be
handled within XMonad via 4 lines of code?

> 
> Personally, I'm sometimes playing with and comparing different WMs
> (stuff like xmonad, scrotwm, ratpoison), and I'm *used* to get the
> cursor I like without tweaking the WM configuration first.

That's fine, but I could also point out window managers that override
the cursor (ion3 and metacity, for example).  You're not guaranteed
that the window manager won't override the default cursor.