Re: Alternative DnD cursors

[Johan Hanson <johan obsession se>]

Owen Taylor wrote:
>
> > IMHO, cursor size should be user-defined. Users usually change the size
> > (or appearance) of their X cursors by replacing the cursor font file with
> > another one. I think special cursors should be in a special font so that
> > users would be able to customize the images.
> 
> No offense to those users smart enough to figure it out, users do
> _not_ usually change the appearance of their cursors in this
> way. Most users have no clue tht they _could_ change them in this
> way.

Ahem. Most users don't change their X cursors at all, but the ones who
do, do it this way!

> > I don't have any problem with GTK installing an extra font.
> 
> I do. GTK+ has no business mucking with the user's fontpath, and
> trying to install things in the standard X font directories is
> not a good idea.

Last time I installed GTK, it put lots of things in the /usr/lib hierarchy.
Why should putting something in /usr/lib/X11/fonts/... be anything
different from installing something in for instance
/usr/lib/gtk/themes/engines ?

>  - you might not have write access there

Last time I installed a new GTK version, I was running as the root user
and the root user was the only user that had write access to anywhere
within the /usr/lib hierarchy.

So, I'm running a Red Hat system. sosumi, most GTK users do.

> A customization interface needs to be:
> 
>  - available by a user without root privileges

Why?

If the requirement for create a mouse cursor customization feature is
to make it available to any user then why should we stop at the DnD cursors?
Should not this framework be available for ALL cursor images available
through gdk/gtk?

I say, either we use fonts for all cursor images (as I propose),
we don't use fonts at all (ALL images uploaded by gdk/gtk)
or we don't make it configurable. (as it is now)

/ Johan
  -- johan@tiq.com -- http://www.obsession.se/johan/ --