Re: Adjusting the 2.4 schedule (cursors)

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Tue, 2003-06-24 at 13:29, Keith Packard wrote:
> Around 11 o'clock on Jun 24, Owen Taylor wrote:
> 
> > - X cursor support for GTK+
> 
> I'd like to see at least a preliminary outline of a spec for a set of 
> standard cursor names and how they map to the existing core cursor 
> numbers.  Without that, we're left with the current disaster where cursor 
> themes require far too many cursors to implement reasonably.  We'll need
> rough semantic descriptions for the HIG as well.  Here's a short list, 
> perhaps we can keep it brief and reduce the number of different cursors 
> that appear on the screen for most application uses:

I think most likely the GTK+ API would have three things:

 - Create cursor by name
 - Create cursors from pixbuf
 - Create animate cursor from pixbufs

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69436 has patches for the
latter two. The first is trivial to implement, though has some
interesting side questions:

 - How does portability to windows work? If you created a custom
   cursor that you installed into the default theme in Unix,
   what would you do in Windows. (Windows has: standard system
   cursor, from resource file, from data stream.)

 - How does legacy handling work for named cursors? (I don't think
   we want to require Xcursor for 2.4)
   
I think for most cases, we'd continue to encourage people to use
the GDK enumeration values, possibly augmented/with deprecations
marked rather than using named cursors where not needed. Named
cursors would, I think, be simply a way of creating custom cursor
with the possibility of themes theming them.

> Pointer.	Default cursor.  Indicates the interface is idle and prepared
> 		to accept commands from the user.  Used to manipulate basic
> 		user interface elements like buttons and scrollbars.
> 
> Text.		Text input cursor.  Indicates the cursor is in a region which
> 		can select text and possibly edit text.
> 
> Busy.		Busy cursor.  Indicates the interface is not prepared to
> 		accept commands from the user and is blocked on some
> 		external resource.
> 
> Pointer+Busy.	Default cursor + busy cursor.  Indicates a pending activity
> 		which may asycnhronously affect the interface but which
> 		is not blocking commands from the user.
> 
> Grab.		Manipulation cursor.  Indicates the interface is engaged in
> 		direct manipulation of some visible representation of
> 		an object.
> 
> Silly.		Ridiculous cursor.  Indicates that the interface is intent
> 		on provoking the user with arbitrary and capricious responses.

I think this list is likely a bit short ... for comparison, Havoc's list
of useful X cursors is at:

http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gdk/gdk-Cursors.html

and the standard set for WinForms is:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfSystemWindowsFormsCursorsMembersTopic.asp

There are also some cursors that really should be in cursor themes that
aren't in either list ... DND cursors come to mind. I don't think making
a cursor theme creator do 20-30 cursors is excessive, as long as they
aren't spending all their time drawing sailboats and space shuttles.

[...]

> A secondary list of 'optional' cursors could then be created to include 
> things like paint tools and resize handles; I'd like to make sure that the 
> use of these optional cursors was restricted somehow so that they didn't 
> appear except where the additional information provided was justified.

I have some trouble seeing how one would draw this line.

Regards,
						Owen