A brown cursor shows up better

[dabrahams]

This works; you just need (for some reason) to try it from a fresh Emacs session.

Fixes #6

[dabrahams]

bump

[dbrock]

Thanks for working on this. I’m reluctant to change the cursor color for a few reasons.

First of all, I think the simple inverted cursor is perfect, so I don’t want to change that on Linux and Windows, and I want to have that on OS X too as soon as the bug is fixed preventing you from changing the foreground color of the cursor.

Second of all, the current color works really well when you’re using a bar cursor instead of a block one, whereas a colored bar looks weird and is hard to see.

I also don’t really like the brown color per se, although obviously you’re right it’s a lot more practical on OS X with the non-blinking block cursor. I’ve been playing around with a few different colors for that, and #406080 looks pretty decent to me under most text faces. (We don’t use much blue in zenburn, so blue works pretty well to make something stand out.) Do you think that’s too hard to see?

Also, have you tried turning on Blink Cursor mode and/or switching to a bar cursor? (Even a hollow block cursor works in theory, though it looks strange.)

I’m not sure what is best, but I’m not totally against special-casing OS X and making the cursor have color there. I almost feel like we should be trying to get the actual Emacs bug fixed instead of trying to work around it, though.

[dabrahams]

on Sun Aug 28 2011, dbrock <reply+i-1307544-0027961efa681208c7b578d69fe83549faf2c9b1-AT-reply.github.com> wrote:

Thanks for working on this. I’m reluctant to change the cursor color
for a few reasons.

First of all, I think the simple inverted cursor is perfect, so I
don’t want to change that on Linux and Windows, and I want to have
that on OS X too as soon as the bug is fixed preventing you from
changing the foreground color of the cursor.

I'm now using Mitsuharu's MacOS emacs port, where I don't notice a bug,
(and on which, BTW, symbolic color names like 'brown look different
from the stock Mac Emacs, so stick with numbers in your themes. He took
his color values from X, I think.) My months-old stock Emacs24 snapshot
isn't showing any issues either.

I found the inverted color to be a little bit jarring and contrast-y at
first, but it's growing on me. I'm willing to go with it.

Second of all, the current color works really well when you’re using a
bar cursor instead of a block one, whereas a colored bar looks weird
and is hard to see.

Understood. Of course, I use a block ;-)

I also don’t really like the brown color per se, although obviously
you’re right it’s a lot more practical on OS X with the non-blinking
block cursor. I’ve been playing around with a few different colors for
that, and #406080 looks pretty decent to me under most text faces. (We
don’t use much blue in zenburn, so blue works pretty well to make
something stand out.) Do you think that’s too hard to see?

Yeah, too hard. I like the original settings better.

Also, have you tried turning on Blink Cursor mode and/or switching to
a bar cursor? (Even a hollow block cursor works in theory, though it
looks strange.)

Sorry, but yuck. Those don't work for me.

I’m not sure what is best, but I’m not totally against special-casing
OS X and making the cursor have color there. I almost feel like we
should be trying to get the actual Emacs bug fixed instead of trying
to work around it, though.

If there is one, yeah we should.

Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com