Tiny Core Linux

Tiny Core Base => TCB Q&A Forum => Topic started by: bauxit on July 31, 2010, 08:13:15 PM

Title: Bigger, colored cursor for my grandmother?
Post by: bauxit on July 31, 2010, 08:13:15 PM

[TC v2.11.6]

Is there any way to change the size of the cursor on the screen? My grandma can't see very well, and she wants a bigger, and red colored mouse cursor. Is it possible to change, or the process to solve the problem is too complicated? (For example the window manager doesn't support this)

Thank you for all your answers! (an intermediate linux user)

Title: Re: Bigger, colored cursor for my grandmother?
Post by: curaga on August 01, 2010, 03:31:34 AM

http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=1688.0

Xvesa only does black-and-white, but a bigger cursor can be done. Xorg would let you use colorful, animated, scalable etc cursors one finds on gnome-look.

Title: Re: Bigger, colored cursor for my grandmother?
Post by: jano on August 01, 2010, 05:08:02 AM

I followed these steps to get a big w&b cursor:

In my "normal" PC

1) Downloaded big-cursor_3.8.tar.gz from one of the many links in http://dir.filewatcher.com/d/Debian/Other/big-cursor_3.8.tar.gz.11569.html

2) Extracted with Xarchive only the file big-cursor.bdf to ~/jano/Downloads/big-cursor/

3) With terminal: bdftopcf -o ~/jano/Downloads/big-cursor/big-cursor.pcf ~/jano/Downloads/big-cursor/big--cursor.bdf

4) Compressed the big-cursor.pcf to big-cursor.pcf.gz

In my "TC PC":

5) Copied big-cursor.pcf.gz to my home directory (which is in  /mnt/sdb1)

6) In /opt/bootlocal.sh added the line cp -f  /mnt/sdb1/home/big-cursor.pcf.gz /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/cursor.pcf.gz

Now I got a BIG cursor (B&W, but that is a start)  ;D

Edited to correct spelling

Title: Re: Bigger, colored cursor for my grandmother?
Post by: sci_fi on August 01, 2010, 11:40:53 AM

I have changed the cursors in my TC implementation as follows:

I use Xorg not Xvesa.

In file /home/tc/.Xdefaults add a line:
Xcursor.theme:YOUR_CURSORS

In directory /home/tc/.icons add a folder:
YOUR_CURSORS/

Create directory YOUR_CURSORS/cursors/

 IN /home/tc/.icons/YOUR_CURSOR/cursors/ add the cursor images you want. Most important are files "hand2" and "left_ptr". You can obtain images from various themes for icewm on the net. 
http://box-look.org/index.php?xsortmode=new&logpage=0&xcontentmode=7311&page=1

 You can edit cursor image files using gimp with a special plugin to handle the cursor file format if you do not find cursors to your liking .

This works for me, but you must use Xorg.

Hope this is helpful.

Best Regards,

sci_fi