Re: Block cursor in a tty

[David Kastrup]

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

> Several people have complained on gnu.emacs.help that Emacs uses an ugly big
> block cursor in their terminal emulator even after they've configured their
> terminal emulator to use a more subdued cursor.
>
> It turns out that the reason for it is that Emacs uses the termcap "vs"
> command to make the cursor visible rather than "ve".  My manpages describe
> the two commands as follows:
>
>        cursor_normal                 cnorm      ve        make cursor appear
>                                                           normal (undo
>                                                           civis/cvvis)
>        [...]
>        cursor_visible                cvvis      vs        make cursor very
>                                                           visible
>
> Does anybody know why Emacs insists on using the big-block-cursor rather
> than using whatever the user has selected as default?

A possible rationale would be that commands like C-x o jump to a
possibly surprising position on the screen, and you would not want to
look too long for locating it.

Personally, I think we should tend to default to the normal cursor,
and maybe provide the visible cursor as an option for people who
really want it.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum