Re: [Usability]Pointer shape in terminals

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

On Tue, 2002-10-22 at 00:14, Tony Houghton wrote:

> I thought it would be a good idea to have an option not to change the
> pointer from its arrow shape, but Havoc brought up the possibility that
> if it's found that a significant majority don't like the I shape, it
> should be removed altogether. And if it is made an option anyway, which
> should be the default?

I guess the underlying question here is what makes the terminal
different from something like gedit?  Is there something about it that
makes it deserving of a special case, or should some new pointer design
apply to all text fields?

> An alternative could be to have a different pointer shape, one that
> gives an indication that the pointer is over text, but still has a clear
> active point.

The standard arrow pointer augmented with a smaller representation
I-beam cursor might be one possible design.  However the I-beam cursor
is a cross-desktop standard with years of history, so it would probably
take people a bit of getting used to and IMHO we'd need a pretty
compelling reason to make something other than the I-beam cursor the
default.  Maybe the reasons you cited are good enough, I dunno...

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems