XANCUR(1.6) Talisman User Commands XANCUR(1.6)
NAMExancur - root cursor animation program for X
SYNOPSISxancur [-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 back-
ground ("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
(although this is really pushing things), by using a mean-
ingful batch animation through a finite number of itera-
tions 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 famil-
iar with the way masks work.
-script scriptname
File scriptname contains commands (similar to those
used on the the command line) and either cur-
sor/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
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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 col-
ors. 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 com-
mand.
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 file-
names, and command switches. The command switches com-
prise 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 particu-
lar cursor construction. One should also note that the
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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 rever-
sal:
-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 rel-
ative 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 signifi-
cantly 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.
SEE ALSOcsh(1), X(1), xinit(1), xset(1), xsetroot(1), xrdb(1),
XDefineCursor(3)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
Copyright (c) 1993, 1994 Christopher Alexander North-Keys
The X Consortium, and any party obtaining a copy of these
files from the X Consortium, directly or indirectly, is
granted, free of charge, a full and unrestricted irrevoca-
ble, world-wide, paid up, royalty-free, nonexclusive right
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and license to deal in this software and documentation
files (the "Software"), including without limitation the
rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute,
sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
permit persons who receive copies from any such party to
do so. This license includes without limitation a license
to do the foregoing actions under any patents of the party
supplying this software to the X Consortium.
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
other members of group Talisman for beta testing this pro-
gram 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.
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