pointer selection is ineffective

[Bogdan Butnaru]

Binary package hint: xorg

The “Appearance Preferences” applet offers the option to “Customize” the display theme. When using this option, the last tab of the “Customize Theme” dialog offers customization of the pointer (mouse cursor) theme. Several options are presented.

I noticed that (on my machine, at least), picking any theme other than the default doesn’t seem to have any effect (nor does the “Size” setting on the same window). After a bit of investigation, I noticed that it is used, but inconsistently. (You can more easily reproduce/check these cases by picking a very obvious theme, e.g. “redglass”, and zooming it to maximum.)

First of all, on the “main” Firefox windows, the theme is always used according to mouse position: over “nothing in particular” it’s the “arrow”, over text it turns to the “text cursor” shape, links get a different arrow, around the window borders it’s the appropriate “resizing arrow” offered by the theme.

All other windows I’ve checked seem inconsistent:

1) Firefox “auxiliary” windows, e.g. “Add-ons” or “Downloads” start inconsistently: they seem to use the “default” cursor for the “normal” arrow and the window-resizing ones. However, once the pointer goes something needing the “text cursor”, it reverts to the “main window” behavior of Firefox, i.e. all cursors become themed (including the “normal arrow” and the window resizing pointers).

2) Most other windows (all that I’ve checked, including Nautilus, the terminal, and the appearance applet) have a different inconsistency:
       2.a) They use the “default” (non-themed) arrow for normal situations.
       2.b) When the cursor should be changed because of window contents, e.g. over text fields, the themed version is used. (This doesn’t “switch” behavior as FF; when the cursor is moved over “normal” widgets it returns to the non-themed arrow cursor.
       2.c) When a window-resizing cursor is need, a themed version is used, but it is that of the cursor theme that was picked when the window was opened. (Suppose you start with a “default”, i.e. un-themed pointer; open a terminal, write “default” in it. Then switch to a themed cursor, say “DMZ Black” zoomed to maximum; open a second terminal and write “DMZ” in it. Then switch to “redglass” with minimum zoom; open a third terminal, write “red” in it. Now move your mouse over the terminals. All three terminals will show the red text cursor over their “text” area, the unthemed cursor over their menu area, and each a different kind of arrows when resizing, matching what is written in them.)

There might be other inconsistencies I haven’t noticed yet.

(Please ignore my non-standard kernel. It’s a “vanilla” version I’m using for tests of other bugs. The bug I’m reporting here occurs the same with a normal Ubuntu kernel.)

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: xorg 1:7.5+5ubuntu1
Uname: Linux 2.6.34-999-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun May 2 14:25:49 2010
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: xorg
Symptom: display
system:
 distro: Ubuntu
 codename: lucid
 architecture: x86_64
 kernel: 2.6.34-999-generic

[John Doe (jodo-deactivatedaccount)]

Disable Compiz. When the behaviour is normal then, this has to be changed against compiz.

[John Doe (jodo-deactivatedaccount)]

Possibly a duplicate of #459647.

[dino99 (9d9)]

Closing that outdated report as EOL has been reached long time ago