Suggestion: Changing mouse pointers

[d4hult dtek chalmers se]

I haven't seen this in the archives or any TODO-list, so here we go:

It would be very nice to be able to change the mouse pointer (or
perhaps cursors is the right term?). I think it looks kind of weird with
the right-facing pointer over the panel. This maybe could be
incorporated in the Mouse Configuration dialog?

If it is possible to change the pointer over the root window, that
would be very nice too, I don't like the cross that seems to be the
standard pointer there. I know that it's possible, but some people told
me that it's not a thing you would want to do, for some reason that I
didn't quite catch...

It strikes me that this may be depending on the particular window
manager that is used, but then again, could this be part of the
gnome-ifying of wms? That they can take hints from gnome about what
pointers to use? 

What do you say?

Richard