XANCUR

Section: Talisman User Commands (1.4)
Updated: Release 5
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NAME

xancur - root cursor animation program for X

SYNOPSIS

xancur [-help] [-display display] [-usleep microseconds] [-fg color] [-bg color] [-rv] [-script scriptname] [-iter iterations] [cursorfile maskfile]...

DESCRIPTION

The xancur program allows the user to animate the background ("root") cursor on a workstation display running X. Normally, one experiments with xancur until one finds a pleasing, personalized look, then puts the xancur command that produces it into an X startup file. If no options are specified, xancur will attempt to read a scriptfile named .xancur in the user's home directory for a list of cursor/mask filenames. Failing that, xancur will look for a system scriptfile defined at compilation --- see FILES below.
xancur can also be used for program-to-user communication, by using a meaningful batch animation through a finite number of iterations to indicate, for example, the completion of a batch job. It can also run until the xancur process is killed by a catch on the end of a task. The program will not, however, pause another invocation of itself while running, so improper use could be less than esthetic.

OPTIONS

The various options are as follows:

-help: Print a usage message and exit.
cursorfile maskfile: Filename pairs in this form are used to set the root cursor animation frame sequence. The enables the user to specify the complete animation cycle with standard cursor and mask bitmaps as used by xsetroot(1). Cursor and mask files are bitmaps (little pictures), and can be made with the bitmap(1) program. One usually wants the mask files to be all black until one becomes more familiar with the way masks work.
-script scriptname: File scriptnamecontains commands (similar to those used on the the command line) and either cursor/mask filename pairs or merely the name of the cursor files to which .mask will be added to create the maskfile names.
-iter iterations: This option sets the number of iterations for the complete animation loop. If left unset, the program will loop until interrupted.
-fg color: Use color as the foreground color.
-bg color: Use color as the background color.
-rv: This exchanges the foreground and background colors. Normally the foreground color is black and the background color is white.
-display display: Specifies the server to which to connect; see X(1).

For convenience, xancur interprets the ~ (tilde) character in the same way as that seen in the csh(1). This is also true within scripts.

It is not currently known precisely how many frames long an animation loop can be. User should probably be warned that, like many other aspects of customization, many days can be lost in exploring such limits.

EXAMPLE

To have xancur cycle through the two cursor/masks pairs for frames bm1 and bm2 one might run the following command.

        xancur -usleep 400000 bm1 bm1.mask bm2 bm2.mask

More commonly, one might run the following in the xancur source directory.

        xancur -script animations/fourpoints/Script

SCRIPTS

The scriptfiles may contain image/mask filename pairs, image filenames with assumed .mask suffixes for mask filenames, and command switches. The command switches comprise a subset of the command line options, and include:

-script scriptname
-fg color
-bg color
-rv

It is important to note that the dash-commands do not get saved or re-executed, but rather merely affect a particular cursor construction. One should also note that the script below will only work with the requisite X bitmaps resident in the same directory as the script file.

A variation of the default pointer, showing color reversal:

-bg white
-fg black
fourpoints0
fourpoints15
fourpoints30
fourpoints45
fourpoints60
fourpoints75
-rv
fourpoints0
fourpoints15
fourpoints30
fourpoints45
fourpoints60
fourpoints75

It should be noted that any pathname within a script file which is not a fully-rooted pathname will be resolved relative to the script file's location rather than relative to the current working directory.

NOTES

Running xancur tends to prevent one's X server from being swapped out as often. This has been known to significantly improve response time on some machines.

FILES

/usr/lib/X11/xancur/Script                  default (system) script.
$HOME/.xancur                      default (personal) script.
$HOME/.xinitrc        typical place for first xancur command.

BUGS

This version probably can't handle individual files of over 64K in length.

The program makes no use of the X resources for anything.

COPYRIGHT

Author's credit must be retained in binaries, manual entries, sources, and derived code.

This software may be freely copied, distributed, compiled, altered, and sold, provided the above restrictions are observed.

This software is provided "as is", with no warranty, guarantee, support, maintenance, update schedule, claims to fitness for any purpose, or anything else from any person or corporate entity. See the source code for additional copyright and limitation information.

AUTHOR

Christopher Alexander North-Keys, Group Talisman

erlkonig@gnu.ai.mit.edu

Special thanks to Mark Lillibridge, MIT Project Athena, for having written the code for xsetroot(1), thanks to the members of group Talisman (UT@Austin CCWF) for beta testing this program and offering comments, and thanks to Mic Kaczmarczik (UT@Austin CCWF) for proofreading this documentation, checking the installation process, and checking the spelling of his surname.

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 11:29:08 GMT, February 07, 2023