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I'd like to be able to set my cursor to "block" style, i.e. a solid, non-blinking rectangle. See the attached screenshot for an example. (the caret is at the "o" in "org" on the second line.)
Created attachment 135476 [details] example screenshot
You mean for the insert caret? In overwrite mode you should already see a block caret. There's no SWT API to control the blink rate. On Windows this is an OS setting.
Hi Dani -- yah, I mean the insert caret. I didn't even realize there was an overwrite mode, I do most of my work on a Mac and there's no "insert" key. :) I just tried switching to overwrite mode and I do indeed see a (blinking) block caret. So I guess what I'm asking for is the ability to have this type of caret, and a configurable color, in insert mode. It's an option in Emacs and a number of terminal applications (separate of any global OS setting) and so seems reasonble to have in Eclipse. I guess it'd be something like "enable thick caret" in the Accessibility prefs. I've found that it's a lot easier to quickly locate my cursor when it's a big red block that isn't blinking, thus the request.
I'm not a Mac expert but maybe there's an option or tweak tool that lets you do this on the OS level. How important is the blink rate?
(cc'ing Scott Kovatch, who's a Mac/SWT guy.) I'm not sure that this needs to have much to do with the OS. AFAIK, the Mac doesn't provide an option for cursor blink rate nor does it have a setting like "cursor size"; that seems to be a per-application thing if you want to do something funky like have a block cursor. So I think it'd be okay for SWT to take this into its own hands, and in fact I believe that StyledText is drawing most of this stuff itself anyway? But I'll let Scott comment on that...
As to "how important is the blink rate", for me it's not about the blink rate, it's about whether the cursor blinks or doesn't. In priority order I would say I'd like: 1. ability to set caret to block 2. control over caret color 3. "don't blink" option But ideally, all 3.
(In reply to comment #4) > I'm not a Mac expert but maybe there's an option or tweak tool that lets you do > this on the OS level. There's no standard UI on the Mac to change the blink rate and the only third-party hack I could find doesn't work on 10.5. So it looks like it can't be changed in Carbon. On Cocoa there's a property that can be set that Cocoa text fields use, but it's not being used right now. > In priority order I would say I'd like: > 1. ability to set caret to block > 2. control over caret color #1 and #2 can be done today with the Caret API. I suspect there's no UI in Eclipse because it can be controlled at the OS level on Windows. > 3. "don't blink" option I will open a new bug in the SWT to use the Cocoa property. If it's -1 there should be no blinking.
I'm not sure that this should necessarily tie into the OS. It seems like this is the kind of setting that (on any OS platform) a user may want to have set specifically for their dev environment -- for instance, do you really want your IE text fields to use the same cursor as your IDE? I dunno -- so making it consistent within Eclipse, across platforms, makes sense to me.
I'm not saying we can't do this. The OS thing was just a pointer which might have helped until this feature is available. We already provide a custom thick caret. However, to control the blinking SWT API is needed.
This bug hasn't had any activity in quite some time. Maybe the problem got resolved, was a duplicate of something else, or became less pressing for some reason - or maybe it's still relevant but just hasn't been looked at yet. If you have further information on the current state of the bug, please add it. The information can be, for example, that the problem still occurs, that you still want the feature, that more information is needed, or that the bug is (for whatever reason) no longer relevant.
Hello, any changes of adding the block cursor shape? Doesn't have to have control over blinking rate.
