Re: Alternative DnD cursors

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Damon Chaplin <damon@helixcode.com> writes:

> Here's my attempt at some better DnD cursors.
> Build & run the attached program to see them and compare them with
> the current ones.

Hey, wait! That's not fair. You've inverted the current ones!

Apply the following patch to testcursor to _actually_ compare
with the current ones.

--- testcursor.c.bak	Mon Apr 24 12:51:30 2000
+++ testcursor.c	Mon Apr 24 12:52:29 2000
@@ -177,8 +177,8 @@
 {
   GdkCursor *cursor;
   GdkPixmap *source, *mask;
-  GdkColor fg = { 0, 65535, 65535, 65535 };
-  GdkColor bg = { 0, 0, 0, 0 };
+  GdkColor fg = { 0, 0, 0, 0 };
+  GdkColor bg = { 0, 65535, 65535, 65535 };
   gint row;
 
   row = GPOINTER_TO_INT (data);

Leaving that aside, your cursors are most likely clearer to the user
than the current ones.

(
Some problems I've seen with the current ones:

 - People don't recognize the arrow and plus as action symbols
 - People expect the hotspot to be at the plus, or at the
   tip of the middle of the plus, not at the corner.
)

The concerns I'd have with your designs:

 - They are almost exact clones of the Windows ones

 - They are too small. The current ones are nice and bold and
   fill up the 16x16 square. Since yours are more sparse, 
   the symbols are too small for easy legibility.

 - We'd have to change the code to put the cursor in a different place
   with respect to the default icon (not a problem, really). The
   current cursors are designed to go at the upper-left-hand corner of
   the icon.
 
> Also, do we have to stick to a size of 16x16?
> Maybe we could try to use nicer 32x32 cursors by default and fallback
> to 16x16 if needed. (How many systems are limited to 16x16?)

No idea how many are limited in that way. Including two sets and
falling back sounds reasonable to me - its not like the 16x16 cursors
take up much space.

Regards,
                                        Owen