Re: [Nautilus-list] Nautilus user testing at MIT

[William Kendrick <nbs sonic net>]

Reinout said:
> 
> The question is - how does the GUI "know" if a window is busy, so that the
> mouse cursor switches to hourglass-mode when it is over that window?  If
> you've figured that out, then you can extract and present this information
> in a different way for the non-mouse users.

The application requests that the mouse pointer appear a certain shape.
The X server then adheres to that request.

That's how some apps can make the mouse disappear, or be different shapes
when the pointer is in different areas of the window (arrow vs. I-beam
vs. hand)


I'm no X11 guru, but it theoretically SHOULD be possible to discover the
mouse shapes being used by different apps.. Of course, at that point,
what will you do with it?

Oh, it happens to be shaped like a watch... a fat ugly watch like
Netscape, or a nice thin watch?  Or maybe an hourglass.  Or a busy bee?

I don't believe there's any "meta" data sent by applications to the X
server that explain _what_ the shape means (eg, "busy", "position
text cursor", etc.)

-bill!