X Window System User's Guide for X11 R3 and R4 of the X Window System

D

Standard Cursors

This appendix shows the standard cursor images that can be used by X programs.

D

Standard Cursors

Table D-1 lists the cursors available in the standard distribution of X from MIT; the cursor shapes themselves are pictured in Figure D-1. The cursor shapes in the standard distribution are the same in Release 3 and Release 4.

To specify a cursor as an argument to a command line option, as the value of a resource variable, etc., strip the XC_ prefix from the symbol name. For example, to specify the XC_sailboat cursor as the xterm pointer, you could enter the command:

% xterm -xrm 'xterm*pointerShape: sailboat'

Each cursor has an associated numeric value (to the right of the symbol name in the table). You may notice that the values skip the odd numbers. Each cursor is actually comprised of two font characters: the character that defines the shape (pictured in Figure D-1), and a mask character (not shown) that sets the cursor shape off from the root (or other) window. (More precisely, the mask selects which pixels in the screen around the cursor are disturbed by the cursor.) The mask is generally the same shape as the character it underlies, but is one pixel wider in all directions.

To get an idea of what masks look like, display the entire cursor font using the command:

% xfd -fn cursor

Table D-1. Standard Cursor Symbols

Symbol	Value
XC_X_cursor	0
XC_arrow	2
XC_based_arrow_down	4
XC_based_arrow_up	6
XC_boat	8
XC_bogosity	10
XC_bottom_left_corner ...