I have noticed that when providing input to read, both Bash's and Dash's, the cursor does not move to the next line if the current line contains 1 character more than there are columns. In MATE Terminal, GNOME Terminal and LXTerminal, the cursor disappears. In xterm and the virtual console the cursor stays in the last column. If the current line contains 2 character more than there are columns, then in all the aforementioned terminals and the console, the cursor appears on the next input line, in the second column, after the excessive character. This behavior can be seen in Bash with

read -p "$( x="$( tput 'cols' )" ; for (( y = 0 ; y < x ; ++y )) ; do echo -n 'x' ; done )"

I don't know if the command works in Dash. This command prints the prompt in read long enough to fill the first line for input with the character "x" until the last column, included (read waits for further input, so you need to control-d to return to the shell). Notice that the cursor has disappeared from the terminal (or console). On the other hand, we see that making the prompt in read 1 character longer causes the cursor to appear on the next line. It can be seen with just changing the 0 in the previous command to -1, like

read -p "$( x="$( tput 'cols' )" ; for (( y = -1 ; y < x ; ++y )) ; do echo -n 'x' ; done )"

Now we print 1 character more that there are columns, the line wraps, and the cursor is shown. The behavior that I would expect is that the cursor moves to the next line if the current line contains 1 character more than there are columns (i.e. the cursor never disappears or stays in the last column). **So, why does the cursor not move? Is it expected behavior? What program or library causes it?**

On Wikipedia [it is explained](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code) that "Device Status Report" is an ANSI control sequence that "[r]eports the cursor position (CPR) by transmitting ESC[n;mR, where n is the row and m is the column". So, in MATE Terminal, in Bash, if I do

echo -ne '\e[6n'

then I get ;1R. It looks like a part of the response that Wikipedia describes. If I then add read like

echo -ne '\e[6n' ; read

then I get ^[[2;1R. I have it where I would expect to provide input. I conclude that this is the proper output of Device Status Report, and that it is being sent to the standard input. **What are the reasons that it is sent to the standard input and not output?** I find this behavior unintuitive. If I would like to know the position of the cursor, ideally I'd have it on the standard output. Like, I could then assign it to a variable easily. Does it play a role that the control sequence is called "Device Status Report" and not "Cursor Position Report"? I see there are multiple questions here regarding Device Status Report, but I cannot find any that would answer this question. If there is, I'd appreciate a link.

I have this code, which does what I want, but I don't entirely understand it:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

echo -ne "\033[6n"            # Ask the terminal to print out the cursor's position
                              # The response looks like ^[[n;mR - where n = row, m = col
read -s -d\[ garbage          # Read the response silently, discarding the first part of the response, leaving n;mR
read -s -d ';' row            # Read some more, silently, until we get to the character ';', storing what we read in the variable "row"
read -s -d R col              # Read some more, silently, until we get to the character 'R', storing what we read in the variable "col"
echo "The (row,col) coords are ($row,$col)"

If I run echo -ne "\033[6n" at a shell prompt, I get kind of what the comments say I'll get, but not exactly:

$ echo -ne "\033[6n"
^[[11;1R$ ;1R

If I put that in a script (I'll call it "splurt.sh"), and run the script, the results are the same:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

echo -ne "\033[6n"

echo

$ ./splurt.sh 

^[[16;1R$ ;1R

So at this point, I just accept that the line works, even if it's not displaying as I would expect it to. But then comes the next line:

read -s -d\[ garbage          # Read the response silently, discarding the first part of the response, leaving n;mR

I kind of understand that "read" reads input from the console (keyboard, usually, I would think), but somehow it seems to be reading from the console's monitor? I understand the "-s" means to read the console silently, but I don't quite comprehend that. I put this into my short script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

echo -ne "\033[6n"
read -s -d\[ garbage
echo

and I get:

$ ./splurt.sh 

$ 25;1R

If I leave out the "-s", I get:

$ ./splurt.sh 
^[[27;1R
$ 27;1R

So I can see that the "-s" does prevent the echo of "^[[27;1R" to the screen, but I don't grok that, because I thought the echo -n e "\033[6n" had already printed that out to the screen (although apparently not, because I don't see it until the "read" reads it?). I do understand (finally! I understand something!) that the "-d" only reads up to the specified delimiter (usually a newline, as I understand it, unless specified by the "-d"), and that what gets read is placed into the variable "garbage" (which is henceforth ignored), but I don't understand how "\[" causes the read to go all the way through "^[[", instead of stopping at "^[", to leave "[27:1R" instead of what it actually leaves of "27:1R". And then the rest of the script I have a fairly good grip on, methinks. Anyone want to take a stab at helping me to understand better what's going on? Thanks!

There are blinking dots below my cursor, I made a photo of them because they are less visible on screenshots. They appear and disappear randomly when cursor changes its type (default, loading, window stretching etc). Some of those dots blink and change color. How do I fix it? Debian unstable, KDE Plasma, Vega 64 GPU.

I have been mixing the use of emacs and vi (vim) for a long time. Each of them has its advantage. I parse error output from a compilation like process and get a line and column number but I can only use emacs to directly go to a line and column: emacs +15:25 myfile.xml with vi I only have the line number (according to the man page) vi +15 myfile.xml There is an option to go position cursor on a pattern (vi +/pattern myfile.xml) which i never got to work. But that would not help me as the pattern is not always the first occurrence in the file. How can I start vi so it goes to column 25 on line 15 of my file? Can I do something with -c option?

When I hold down the left or right arrow keys to move my cursor, the cursor moves correctly but if I release the button suddenly, the cursor keeps moving for a little while, as if there is a delay which is kind of frustrating as I can't find the right position. I am using zsh and the latest version of Kali (Kali 2024). Also, I am using Gnome. Maybe it's a Gnome issue? (The VM is not cloud-based so no delays from internet connection; I've also changed the options setting repeat (keys-->speed repeat, keys-->delay) but those are for typing issues not for cursor movement) I have delved into this and I am very close to figuring it out but I need help. I've set these values for Gnome for numpad keys 2,4,6,8 (which act like arrows when NumLock is disabled). These buttons seem to work properly when holding/releasing. The cursor movement speed is OK and when I release the keys, they immediately stop just like any other distribution. The problem now is how to pass the same values for the classical cursor control keys because those don't work properly. gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.a11y.keyboard mousekeys-max-speed 2000; gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.a11y.keyboard mousekeys-init-delay 20; gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.a11y.keyboard mousekeys-accel-time 2000; gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.a11y.keyboard mousekeys-enable true; └─$ xset q Keyboard Control: auto repeat: on key click percent: 0 LED mask: 00000002 XKB indicators: 00: Caps Lock: off 01: Num Lock: on 02: Scroll Lock: off 03: Compose: off 04: Kana: off 05: Sleep: off 06: Suspend: off 07: Mute: off 08: Misc: off 09: Mail: off 10: Charging: off 11: Shift Lock: off 12: Group 2: off 13: Mouse Keys: off auto repeat delay: 600 repeat rate: 31 auto repeating keys: 00ffffffdffffbbf fadfffefffedffff 9fffffffffffffff fff7ffffffffffff bell percent: 50 bell pitch: 400 bell duration: 100 Pointer Control: acceleration: 2/1 threshold: 4 Screen Saver: prefer blanking: yes allow exposures: yes timeout: 0 cycle: 0 Colors: default colormap: 0x20 BlackPixel: 0x0 WhitePixel: 0xffffff Font Path: /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi,built-ins DPMS (Display Power Management Signaling): Standby: 0 Suspend: 0 Off: 0 DPMS is Enabled Monitor is On gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.keyboard org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.keyboard delay uint32 500 org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.keyboard numlock-state false org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.keyboard remember-numlock-state true org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.keyboard repeat true org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.keyboard repeat-interval uint32 30

*Xcursor* is a format for the graphics of the cursor in *X11* (file reports X11 cursor). xcursorgen allows you to convert PNG files and some metadata to Xcursor files. How do I convert an Xcursor file to PNG images? Imagemagick's convert unfortunately returns: >> no decode delegate for this image format

For making documentation/tutorial videos, I need to highlight the mouse, for example with a yellow translucent corona around it: The marker should be active when clicking and moving, but if it's on all the time, that's just as fine. It can obscure the view on what is behind it to some degree but it may not disable being able to click what is behind it or take focus away from windows. Compiz seems like a thing of the past, find-cursor isn't tied to any actions (clicks/movements) and blocks interaction (while it's drawing, you can't click "through" it) and key-mon doesn't draw correctly, disables interaction as well and is generally buggy when it comes to the mouse highlighter, at least with a tiling window manager. I'm using Arch Linux and awesome wm. Thanks!

I switched to Arch Linux running KDE Plasma and whenever I run a Gnome app like nautilus, the cursor size is not right. I tried this for other Gnome apps too and all of them have the same issue. Here is a picture: For some reason the gnome sound recorder does not have the issue anymore. I fixed this by installing it from the discover app and removing the normal version. I tried this for other apps too but it doesn't work.

I was wondering if there is a feature in linux like OSX "shake to locate cursor", which temporarily makes the user's mouse or trackpad cursor much larger when shaken back and forth, making it easier to locate if the user loses track of it.

Is xeyes purely for fun? What is the point of having it installed by default in many linux distrubutions (in X)?

The default X11 cursors are quite tiny when the display is a 4k screen. How can I use bigger cursors? Requirements: * Must work under plain X11 (no KDE, Gnome or similar bloat) * Should have at least a bigger root window cursor, i.e "arrow" * Should work on FreeBSD I have looked at the Xcursor(3) manual page which talks about the ~/.icons directory but I am unsure which files to place there and how to activate them. I have a bunch of directories on the system, such as /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/64x64 /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/64x64/categories /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/64x64/apps /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/64x64/devices /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/64x64/emotes /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/64x64/mimetypes /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/64x64/emblems /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/64x64/actions /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/64x64/places /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/64x64/status /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/48x48 /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/48x48/emotes /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/48x48/devices /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/48x48/apps /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/48x48/mimetypes /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/48x48/status /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/48x48/emblems /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/48x48/actions /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/48x48/places /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/48x48/categories /usr/local/share/icons/oxygen/48x48/animations each of which containing a large number of icons as *.png files.

According to the documentation of [XCreateFontCursor]: > Applications are encouraged to use this interface for their cursors because the font can be customized for the individual display type. How do I actually customize the cursor generated from this method? I've tried setting XCURSOR_SIZE environment variable to no percieved effect, I've tried setting XCursor.theme: redglass in my Xresources and this changes some applications but not all, (interestingly emacs uses the selected theme in the editor area but not in the menu bars) and as I am using dwm as my window manager no configuration specific to a desktop environment is applicable.

I have an idea, I hope to have two windows side by side on the screen, for example evince on the left and gedit on the right. I hope that Fn+WASD can move the cursor in evince, and Fn+IJKL can move the cursor in gedit. When I type normally, the input content is displayed in gedit. How can I do this? Currently I use linux mint 21.3. Or replace the above Fn+WASD with Win+WASD/LAlt+WASD

Under Debian 9.3 and 9.8 with OPENBOX and LIGHTDM. I have a problem with the mouse pointer on screen. Depending on the orientation, there is a section on screen that the mouse pointer doesn’t go. BUT, click, move and drag events still occur in this section, just “blindly”. The tested resolution, correctly reported by xrandr, is 1920x1080 or 1080x1920. In “normal” or “left” orientation (--rotate normal, --rotate left), there is approx. 4px on the left of the screen that the pointer doesn’t go into. In “inverted” or “right” orientation, there is a rather large section on the left (approx. 20% of the screen) that the pointer doesn’t go into. BUT, as I said, I can still “move” into this section and click on things. The mouse pointer just stops at the edge of the “invisible line” on screen. If I move in the blind section and “come back”, the pointer “jumps” from where it was stuck to the place where I “surface back” as if the position of the pointer on screen was suddenly updated. I tried playing with --fb and --panning switches to xrandr but it doesn’t correct anything. It extends the desktop and I can pan right or down but the mouse pointer is still sticking to the invisible line. See images : Do anyone have an idea ? Thank you.

I know I can change some fundamental settings of the Linux console, things like fonts, for instance, with dpkg-reconfigure console-setup. But I'd like to change things like blinkrate, color, and shape (I want my cursor to be a block, at all times). I've seen people accomplishing this. I just never had a chance to ask those people how to do that. *I don't mean terminal emulator windows, I mean the Linux text console, you reach with Ctrl+Alt+F-key* I'm using Linux Mint at the moment, which is a Debian derivate. I'd like to know how to do that in Fedora as well, though. ---------- ***Edit:** I might be on to something* I learned from this website , how to do the changes I need. But I'm not finished yet. I've settled on using echo -e "\e[?16;0;200c" for now, but I've got a problem: when running applications like vim or irssi, or attaching a screen session, the cursor reverts back to being a blinking gray underscore. And of course, it only works on this one tty all other text consoles are unaffected. So how can I make those changes permanent? How can I populate them to other consoles?

When I try to search for this problem I get many results, but most of them seem to be about mouse cursor themes, and I haven't played with that, and can't see how that could explain the symptoms I see. When the mouse cursor is over a window from thunderbird, firefox or a (group) chat from pidgin, the mouse cursor is 2-4 times the usual size, that it has when over windows with xterm, liferea, pavucontrol, audacious or the friend list from pidgin (I think that's everything I have running right now). The exception being if pidgins task bar menu is open, then the cursor is the usual (small) size, no matter which window the cursor is in. I use i3 as window manager with no desktop manager on debian Stretch (but I only upgraded a couple of days ago, and also saw the problem on Jessie). Any explanation (and cure) or just hints to how I find out what is wrong.

When opening an xterm on my Ubuntu 16.04.1 system, the cursor disappears whenever it's moved over highlighted / reversed text. It remains the same color as the foreground and completely blocks out the character it's on top of. On my CentOS 7 system which comes with a slightly older version of xterm (295 vs 322 on Ubuntu), the cursor color inverts properly (see the following screenshot): So far I've noticed this happening in alpine and vim; in bash/tcsh the cursor seems to work fine. The built-in terminal app and urxvt do not exhibit this problem at all. Any ideas on what might be causing this?

I've changed my .Xdefaults for a black background, white foreground, but my cursor is now opaque. I can't see the letter I'm over, and worse I can't see my screen hardstatus. Google is just pulling up how to make the whole term transparent. How can I make my cursor transparent again? $ cat .Xdefaults URxvt*transparent: true URxvt*tintColor: Black URxvt*shading: 110 URxvt*saveLines: 60000 URxvt*foreground: White URxvt*font: xft:Droid Sans Mono:pixelsize=14 URxvt*scrollBar: false # Clickable links URxvt*perl-ext-common: default,matcher URxvt*urlLauncher: firefox URxvt*matcher.button: 1

I have a laptop with a Windows 10 and Linux Mint MATE dual boot. I noticed that when I'm using the laptop mousepad, the cursor jumps to the border of the screen. If I swipe my finger slowly, the cursor slides normally, but if I swipe my finger just a little bit faster, the cursor jumps to the border of the screen. It does not jump with an external USB mouse.