john%hopf.math.nwu.edu@eecs.nwu.edu (John Franks) (02/14/89)
I have just installed SunOS 4.0 on a grayscale 3/110. I noticed that when an alert box appears (e.g. to confirm a quit), the arrow mouse cursor is hard to see. Actually it is given the background color so it effectively punches a hole in the alert box. If it is moved out of the box it is really invisible and it can be difficult to get it back in the box. I vaguely recalled reading something about this in sun-spots so I made a search of our local archives. Two people reported encountering this problem (in 6.154 and 6.166) and one kind soul suggested it is a feature (6.189). Has anybody found a fix for this problem? John Franks Dept of Math. Northwestern University Internet john@math.nwu.edu Bitnet j_franks@nuacc
dcall@amadeus.la.tek.com (Dale Call) (03/02/89)
john%hopf.math.nwu.edu@eecs.nwu.edu (John Franks) writes: >I have just installed SunOS 4.0 on a grayscale 3/110. I noticed that when >an alert box appears (e.g. to confirm a quit), the arrow mouse cursor is >hard to see. Actually it is given the background color so it effectively >punches a hole in the alert box. If it is moved out of the box it is >really invisible and it can be difficult to get it back in the box. On a COLOR Sun 3/60 running Sun O/S 4.0, a fix is to invoke SunView with either the -overlay_only or the -8bit_color_only flag. In overlay_only mode, the windows are only in the black and white overlay plane group. The color mode puts them only in the color plane group (cursor turns red). The overlay only mode will mess up color graphics, and the color only mode is noticably slower (esp. text scrolling). However, you no longer lose the cursor. See the sunview(1) manual page for more details. Any better fixes out there? Does 4.0.1 fix any of this? Dale Call
montnaro@uunet.uu.net (Skip Montanaro) (03/09/89)
john%hopf.math.nwu.edu@eecs.nwu.edu (John Franks) writes the his cursor disappears in alert boxes on his 3/110G running SunOS 4.0, to which dcall@amadeus.la.tek.com (Dale Call) replies On a COLOR Sun 3/60 running Sun O/S 4.0, a fix is to invoke SunView with either the -overlay_only or the -8bit_color_only flag. [ other stuff deleted ] Any better fixes out there? Does 4.0.1 fix any of this? At the risk of being snooty, may I suggest a switch to NeWS? (semi :-) Cursors consist of positive images and surrounding masks displayed in a color contrasting the positive image, so no matter where your cursor is, either the cursor or the surrounding mask is always visible. I believe, although I'm not certain, that this is true of X as well. Skip Montanaro (montanaro@sprite.steinmetz.ge.com, montanaro@ge-crd.arpa)