Does anybody know of any programs that will allow me to create cursor files and save them in .cur format? I have tried using an icon editor, but i couldn't figure out how to assign the hotspot so I guess I need a true cursor editor.

use any editor..... the standard X command "xcursorgen" will generate the cursor file.

from the "--help" it provides, it takes a batch a PNG files, along with a config file ... read "man xcursorgen" , I'm on linspire right now (it doesn't come with the "man" or "info" commands by default), so i cant tell you anymore about it

I know I'm bringing up a dinosaur of a thread--but I've been trying to find an editor for a while now and this thread is the only thing I could find.

Using xcursorgen, since there's no way to directly see the results of one's work until they put the files in a certain directory and reset the window handler (in my case KDE), the idea of using a graphics converter rather than an editor doesn't exactly make me want to put any work into the graphics when I don't know the way it's going to handle them. This requires doing a bunch of tests before I've even started.

Is there a pointer editor out there? The amount of work needed to do it the way mentioned doesn't really seem worth it. The usage description is not verbose enough
and this is all I get when I do "man xcursorgen"

Hmm, xcursor, I'll try that: Xcursor is not offered through apt-get, unless it's one of those things where you have to put the version number after it or something... So then I tried "sudo apt-get install xcursor*" and got this:
Well that certainly doesn't look right. Maybe it is, but I'd rather ask someone first.


What I'd really love is to be able to use .cur and .ani files that I normally do in windows, but searches for that have shown even less results.

FYI: I never did figure this out

I was shocked when I got the email notification for this.

I can’t see how xcursorgen handles the files. I don’t know how it handles alpha-layers. I can’t SEE how it works—it’s a cli program—there is no visual representation of how it recognizes alpha layers. I’ll just have to accept that it MAY convert them correctly.

I have had bad luck trying to get cursors that I have downloaded accepted into KDE. I read that I should put them into the .icons directory, and that only worked once, and it defaulted to a 64x64 cursor, not giving me any choices. It seems to be all in these text files that are with them that tell it what to associate what images with what cursor type. There seems to be no program available that handles this—it seems likely that this needs to be done by hand.

Documentation would be greatly appreciated on this.

Then there's a couple themes that I actually got working using the importing option for cursors in KDE--how do those work? I can't find any documentation on those either.

Like a cli program, I’m not willing to put the work into setting up the graphics if I don’t even know if I’ll really be able to use them.

I need help on this.


Now--if someone knows of a red pointer that comes to a point and doesn't look cartoony and isn't rounded at the tip (and doesn't look pixelated-blocky) that can be easily installed on KDE, that actually is complete and doesn't still use the standard X server pointer at certain points, I'd be really happy and I could stop trying to make my own pointer just so I can get a red pointer.

Can someone just point me in the direction of a red cursor that is complete that installs easily into KDE?

well, the man page pretty much tells everthing. You make a cursor with gimp or inkscape, name it ptr_left.png, then make a ptr_left.config file as shown in the man page (for example the line '24 0 0 ptr_left.png' gives you a 24x24 px cursor with the hotspot in the top left corner), then type

xcursorgen ptr_left.config ptr_left

and your cursor is generated. If you wanna know how to make an complete cursor theme, I'd suggest you go to kde-look.org, download one of the cursor themes and look how it's done. It's pretty easy.

Thank you for the help. Just so you know--if you look at post #3, you can see that I quoted the entire man page for xcursorgen. I've read it, over and over again and it doesn't tell me WHERE it puts the files, what types of files it generates, and how I can apply that generated file to actually use. It's sort of like having the desire to eat the cake and not just have it. It's pointless to make a cursor file if I'm not going to be able to do anything with it.

How do I apply a single cursor file to a cursor type--as in, a busy cursor, a text-select cursor, etc... Do I REALLY have to make an entire theme, which has to be done by hand, just to use ONE new cursor, or is there another way?


The rest of this post is assuming that the ONLY way to view a cursor in action is to create an entire theme:

How does the .icon directory work? Most cursors I download from kde-look.org are not accepted by the cursor import option in KDE, and when they are they're never a complete set--it reverts back to the standard X server cursor for the ones that are missing, and I've only gotten ONE to work using the .icon directory--and I don't know what I'm doing wrong, since the interface offers no feedback on such matters. The part I understand the least is how it's supposed to just work once I restart KDE and then moves those files to a place that I don't know about. Why do I need to restart KDE? What is wrong with the import cursor option in KDE?

This message is a bump.

it creates exaclty one file as said in the manpage (namely the [output_file]), which is a .png file with some additional meta info. You have to give it the name of the cursor you want it to be (for example ptr_left for the main cursor) and then replace your current cursor with it. The other way is to make a new theme and choose it in kcontrol, you needn't make a whole theme for that, the cursors of the default theme will be chosen if you haven't made one.
There are 2 icon folders, one in the users homedir and a global one, which location depends on the distro you use.

Why don't you just play around with xcursorgen and after you figured everything out, ask more specific questions (in case you still have problems then).

I am not accustomed to CLI based programs. They scare me--as in, because so many of them require admin privileges, I tend to stay away from them as much as possible because it's too easy to mess something up REALLY BAD when using a CLI program. I didn't know whether xcursorgen might have automatically put the output file in the place where KDE can use it and that the output name was simply the name, or whether it was the directory AND the name. It's one thing that still gets me confused sometimes--now I realize it's the directory AND the name that output-file is referring to. Sometimes I end up having a brain fart and ask questions about something I should know already. Sorry about that.

As I've said before, several times I've put things in that .icons directory, restarted KDE, and only ONE time was I sucessful in getting KDE to recognize any of them. If there's a file I need to edit to get them working, some info on that would be really helpful.

All I can say is that there sure are a lot of steps involved in doing this. Much more than I expected. I hope that kde4 has improved little things like this. It may be superficial, but so is any desktop enhancement.

Again, I said this already--kontrol doesn't load most themes I download. I've gotten only a couple to work that way, and I've only gotten ONE to work by putting it into the .icons directory.

Making a cursor with xcursorgen is useless if I can't get KDE to recognize them. You've done your best to answer my questions about xcursorgen, but must not have seen the issues I was having with getting KDE to recognize the cursors I have downloaded, and that's just themes.

How do I apply a single cursor file to a cursor type--as in, a busy cursor, a text-select cursor, etc... Do I REALLY have to make an entire theme, which has to be done by hand, just to use ONE new cursor, or is there another way?

How does the .icons directory work, and why do cursors go into a directory called .icons instead of .cursors? Does KDE handle both cursors and icons similarly?

Well, I finally figured it out. "a global one" meant /usr/share/icons

I had to find this directory by searching for the name of one of the themes that already work.

I've gotten everything working as far as this goes now.