Re: invisible mouse pointer?

[Jan Djärv]

Eli Zaretskii skrev:
> > Date: Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:34:52 +0300
> > From: Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden>
> > Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden
> >
> > > I just checked in a fix for this so the pointer becomes invisible when you 
> > > type something.
> > Why are we doing this in C, rather than adding the invisible-pointer
> > option to avoid.el?
>
> And after looking at the code, I must say I don't like this option at
> all, certainly not turned on by default.
>
>       DEFVAR_LISP ("make-pointer-invisible", &Vmake_pointer_invisible,
>                    doc: /* If non-nil, make pointer invisible while typing.
>     The pointer becomes visible again when the mouse is moved.  */);
>       Vmake_pointer_invisible = Qt;
>
> Why is this behavior such a good idea?  Looking for and not finding my
> mouse pointer doesn't sound like a fun at all.

The ns-port for Emacs has it on by default.  Not that is was a reason, I only 
found that out after I made this default.

The reason is that most other applications have this by default, so I don't 
think new user will be as confused as you think.

gedit, gnome-terminal, gtranslator in Gnome.  Actually it is a property of the 
Gtk+ text and label widget.  So if you do Save as... in Emacs, you already 
have it in the Name part of the dialog.

On KDE there is konsole, kate, kwrite (it is probably part of Qt widgets).

On OS X all applications seem to have it, for example TextEdit, Pages, Xcode,
the very editor I type this in now (Thunderbird, but no invisible pointer in 
GNU/Linux).

On MS Windows XP there is MS Word, Visual Studio, Notepad and Wordpad that I 
have seen.

So it is not a new crazy idea, there is plenty of current usage.

        Jan D.