mouse cursors

[Ben Frantzdale <frantzdb admin arhs net>]

I have several issues/ideas/etc to do with mouse cursors.

First:
I remember seeing this discussion on the e-devel list, but not here, so...
My understanding is that X only supports mouse cursors with a size of
16x16 pxls in two colors (any two colors, but only two). (This could be
"fixed" with the hack of a program displaying a picture, continually
updating its posision, but this is ugly.) While bells and whistles such as
fancy animated color cursors are really a waste, the are neet and Windows
users seem to like 'em. The size problem is more of an issue. While I'm
not saying that X should be like windows, Windows' default mouse pointer
is larger than 16x16, and Win. does have the ability to use much larger
pointers for those who want it. [I am ignorant of X's limitations with
mouse pointers, I just said what I remember hearing.]

Second:
I know E does some handeling of mouse pointers, but I think a
control-center applet for mouse pointer config would be a nice thing. no
more "X" pointer if E or something else isn't setting a pointer.

Last but not least:
E has a spiffy feature with mouse pointers that I think could be extended
to GTK and/or GNOME. In some E themes, the pointer changes depending on
what it will do, such as "<->" where it will resize horizontally. Most
WM's/OSes do this, but E goes on to have a "move" icon (four arrows) on
the titlebar, "X" for close, etc. This is concurrent to Netscape having a
hand pointer for links. The idea is this: the mouse pointer should give
the user an idea of what will happen. (If you think this is useless,
imagine always having a simple pointer.)
Extending this notion, to be consistant everything requiring one click
(buttons, links) would have the (widely accepted) "pointing hand" pointer.
Would this easy to impliment? usefull?

--Ben