#18 Use regular mouse pointer instead of pen or dot

[Thomas123]

Hello there,

first of all, thank you very much for this wonderful and agile program!

My question: Is there a way to modify the cursor pen or dot? ... or use the default mouse pointer instead?

In my case the dot is very very tiny ... basically almost not be found ... and the pen is difficult to get used to, because it writes with the bottom left instead of with the top left (like the normal mouse pointer).

Can I modify this somehow?

Best greetings,
Thomas

[Denis Auroux]

Alas there's no way to do this without recompiling from the source code,
I think. The change is very minor though. After downloading the source at
https://sourceforge.net/p/xournal/code/ci/master/tree/
(click "download snapshot" in the dark gray bar below menu)
edit src/xo-paint.c to change line 61

 return gdk_cursor_new(GDK_PENCIL);

to

 return NULL;

With this change, the "pencil cursor" option will instead give you the
default pointer (arrow most commonly) instead.

Then recompile: install any development packages needed, see the file
called INSTALL in the distribution; if you already have them, the
commands are: ./autogen.sh ; make; sudo make install

By the same token: some people have asked for larger cursors for the
drawing tools. This can be done by modifying the same portion of
src/xo-paint.c, change the three constants defining the sizes of the
cursors for example from 1, 3, 4, to:

define PEN_CURSOR_RADIUS 2

define HILITER_CURSOR_RADIUS 6

define HILITER_BORDER_RADIUS 7

(alas 7 is the largest legal value without further, deeper code changes).

Denis

[mauricebis]

Agree. Using the new input system in preferences, the cursor is too tiny. Now, to get the arrow instead, if I'm not mistaken, there wouldn't be the need to recompile since by ticking the option off, the cursor reverts to the standard arrow. Personally, I prefer the new input system because the screen is more stable and better for eyesight but with a bigger point.

Also, I personally prefer the darkness of the writing in version 1.0.19 compared to light gray in version 1.0.20. It would be good to have a customized parameter for this.

Thanks for xournal++

[Adrian Obuhov]

Hi, I've changed the code line as suggested, but where can I find information about how to compile the files?

[Denis Auroux]

The text file "INSTALL" gives some notes for how to do this (assuming you are on linux -- for windows it's a lot more complicated, see BUILD-NOTES.win32). Basically, you need to have the development packages for gtk2, libgnomecanvas, poppler and a few others (if you are using Fedora the packages you need include: autoconf, automake, gtk2-devel, libgnomecanvas-devel, poppler-glib-devel, and the dependencies of those). Then run "./autogen.sh" in the main directory; if it complains about missing packages, install them. Then run "make," and as root, "make install"
(or else, if you don't want to install, make sure to launch the copy of xournal that is in the directory where you compiled (in the src/ subdirectory) rather than the version packaged by your distribution).

[mauricebis]

Any possibility of getting that version with bigger cursor as a package ? That'd be great.

[Denis Auroux]

Mauricebis, I am confused since your previous message from last January seem to be referring to versions of xournal++ (1.0.19, 1.0.20 are not versions of xournal). Which one is your request about, xournal or xournal++? Those are two different pieces of software, and I have nothing to do with the latter.

Regarding xournal, I am not particularly keen to repackage anything at the moment due to lack of time and lack of clear consensus about what is best. I and many others with styluses prefer the smaller dot size that makes it clearer exactly where the stylus will write, even on a very high resolution screen; and the argument for the default pointer over the "pencil cursor" is rather weak. One should eventually add a bunch of configuration options to let the user customize things more, but the config file is already a bit cluttered so I'd rather get this done right and not open a Pandora's box of further customization requests + no time right now so I'm not very likely to do this anytime soon.