X With No Mouse Cursor

innocent_white_lamb writes "I am using an X-based menu that doesn't recognize a mouse. Keyboard input only. I load the menu with the command "startx -e menu", which loads the menu and gets stuff going without any need for a window manager. The problem is that the mouse cursor sits in the middle of the screen and, without a mouse attached, there appears to be no way to move it or get rid of it. I've asked around and nobody seems to have run into this situation before. So my question is, how do you get rid of the mouse cursor under X without using a window manager?"

Comments

XFREE 4.3

[YOU ARE SO FIRED!]

Make a cursor theme that makes the cursor invisible or a single pixel or something. That's the easy way. And you're fired.

Use the force Luke!

[Ashran]

Set the X/Y init position somewhere off the screen and recompile.

Re:Use the force Luke!

[Henry V .009]

But it's still there. The entire time you're using the system, you know the pointer is there, just beyond your awareness, lurking. You can almost hear the phantom 'click-click' in your head as you work. Your mind creates false images, convincing you that you've glimpsed it from the corner of your eye. Finally, you take the monitor in your two hands and crash it into the wall, screaming: "I know you're in there!" You shake in rage as you rustle through the broken components looking for the little white group of pixels.

Ah...let's just say that your suggestion didn't work for me.

unclutter

[halfnerd]

unclutter does the job for you

Re:unclutter

[halfnerd]

Even found you an url:
http://packages.debian.org/stable/x11/unclut ter.ht ml

change the cursor

[dj.delorie]

xfd -fn cursor

then choose a cursor that's blank as the default. Or substitute a cursor font that's nothing but blanks.

Moving the cursor without a mouse

[ion_]

without a mouse attached, there appears to be no way to move it or get rid of it.

You can move the cursor by pressing Ctrl-Shift-Num Lock and then using the numpad. You move the cursor with the keys around 5, click with 5, etc. A quick googling brought up this webpage.

Just write a small program

[metalhed77]

that uses XWarpPointer[sic] to move the pointer wherever on boot.

Re:Just write a small program

[sforman]

or just use this one

The obvious answer

[WIAKywbfatw]

So my question is, how do you get rid of the mouse cursor under X without using a window manager?

Get a cat cursor to chase it away!

from XJ.cpp in the mythtv distribution

[benwb]

void XvVideoOutput::hide_cursor(void)
{
Cursor no_ptr;
Pixmap bm_no;
XColor black, dummy;
Colormap colormap;
static char no_data[] = { 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 };

colormap = DefaultColormap(XJ_disp, DefaultScreen(XJ_disp));
XAllocNamedColor(XJ_disp, colormap, "black", &black, &dummy);
bm_no = XCreateBitmapFromData(XJ_disp, XJ_win, no_data, 8, 8);
no_ptr = XCreatePixmapCursor(XJ_disp, bm_no, bm_no, &black, &black, 0, 0);

XDefineCursor(XJ_disp, XJ_win, no_ptr);
XFreeCursor(XJ_disp, no_ptr);
}

Problem solved

[Permission Denied]

Start up the program "bitmap" that comes standard with XFree86. It starts with an empty bitmap. Save the empty bitmap to "empty.xbm." Click the "invert" button to set all the pixels in the bitmap. Save this bitmap to "full.xbm."

Now type:

xsetroot -cursor empty.xbm full.xbm

This changes the root cursor to the empty bitmap you just created.

Instead of "startx -e menu" write a shell script with two lines:

#!/bin/sh
xsetroot -cursor /path/to/empty.xbm /path/to/full.xbm
exec menu

Have "startx" execute this script, or simply make this script your .xinitrc.

Problem solved.

However, if the "menu" program you speak of does not simply inherit the root window's cursor (default behaviour), you will need either to modify the program to do so (eg, comment out the cursor-setting lines, grep for XSetWindowAttributes or XDefineCursor), or to modify your cursor font so the cursor it uses is the blank one you created. If the program creates its own cursor rather than using a standard cursor from the cursor font, you need to modify the source. It's probably much easier to modify the source anyway, since it only takes a grep and a recompile, whereas if you want to modify your cursor font, you have to find some font editing program and deal with someone's idea of a usable graphical interface.

If you don't have source to your program, you'll need to break out the hex editor. If this is the case and you don't know i386 asm, post a URL to the program.

Check the mplayer sources.

[Gadzinka]

Just check the mplayer sources.

I don't know if what mplayer does is pure X stuff or if it talks window manager into hiding mouse cursor. But when you move mouse cursor into mplayer video window it disapears after a while.

Just check the sources and see if you can implement the same in your menu program. But beware, mplayer is GPL so if you use this code directly you would have to license your program GPL too.

You can of course check what it is doing and reimplement it.

Robert

Invisible cursor

[BESTouff]

Here is your invisible cursor:

• Create a file named emptycursor containing:
  #define nn1_width 16
  #define nn1_height 16
  static unsigned char nn1_bits[] = {
  0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
  0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
  0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00};
• type this command:
  xsetroot -cursor emptycursor emptycursor
• Profit !

a botched appleotomy

[epine]

A long time ago, at a time in my life when I had more money than brains, I bought myself a Fat Mac with 512K memory and two floppy disk drives the day this model first hit the streets in Toronto.

My girlfriend at the time (I guess there is an upside to having more money than brains) needed to conduct an experiment in cognitive psychogology to complete her undergraduate philosophy degree.

She decided to conduct an experiment in reading comprehension. Both groups were asked to read the text, but with different reading instructions. One group was instructed to proofread the text, the other group was instructed to read for comprehension.

We decided that programming this experiment for my new Mac would automate the timing controls, automatically measure the proofing reading results (how many words were marked with a mouse click), to collect the multiple choice results, and record the text of a written response question (in a dialog box roughly as feeble and distigusting as the web form input box used to compose posts for slashdot twenty years later).

When I showed her the first version, her remark was this, "you have to remove the menu bar or I'll fail". I could see her point. For an experiment in reading comprehension you want to control every word of text presented to the subject. Her professor would see it the same way.

At this point I should have pulled out a roll of duct tape, sliced off a half inch think strip, and covered over the top half inch of the display.

But ego prevailed. Surely, I thought, I just need to read the big Apple developer guide phone book thing to find the right flag to the right system call to remove the menu bar.

Thus began three weeks in hell.

The only way I could find to suppress the menu bar was to skip the initial call to some of the Apple windowing subsystems. It seemed to work. But then my program began to crash in dozens of mysterious and different ways. Eventually I learned that the call I had skipped initialized data structures required by many other subsystems.

Then I found other system calls that would hide the menu bar temporarily. But the nasty thing would reappear randomly as the user performed mouse actions. No matter what I tried, the cat came back.

Within a few months I several other frustrating encounters with the Mac architecture. I grew to despise the architecture of the Mac windowing system. I thought I could escape from Pascal hell by installing the Aztec C compiler. I was instantly much happier, but it wasn't a productive situation because the underlying C to Pascal mapping was full of bugs.

Then I was forced to buy an 8MHz PC for a programming contract. I put the hideously Fat Mac into a closet and I can barely recall using it since. I made one effort to salvage my investment by inquiring about the cost of a making a modification to install an internal hard drive, but the price was outrageous (almost as much as the entire turbo PC I bought instead).

Thanks to Apple, I learned a extremely valuable lesson about decoupling policy from implementation. One man's policy (Steve's) is another man's hell (mine).

Twenty years later, I never complain about X Windows. At least I know that this of kind of question *can* be answered.

Gawd I hated that machine. And it turned out the girlfriend wasn't much better.