Mouse cursor not displaying

[Charlie]

I am trying to make a workaround for a game in wine (M1 tank platoon
2) to force the cursor to display in the game's menu but haven't had
any luck. I tried to set the cursor to the default pointer with this
code (xid is the X window id of the main game window):

csr = XCreateFontCursor (g_display, XC_left_ptr);
XDefineCursor (g_display, xid, csr);

XQueryTree (g_display, xid, &root, &parent, &children, &n);
if ((n > 0) && (children != NULL))
{
for (i = 0; i < (int) n; i++)
{
XDefineCursor (g_display, children[i], csr);
}
XFree (children);
}

XFreeCursor (g_display, csr);

However the above code has no effect on this game. This code does
change the pointer in other windows I have tried.

Does anyone know what could cause a mouse cursor to not be shown?

Thanks in advance,
Charlie

[Lew Pitcher]

On Monday 28 May 2012 12:10, in comp.windows.x, nos...@embarqmail.com wrote:

> I am trying to make a workaround for a game in wine (M1 tank platoon
> 2) to force the cursor to display in the game's menu but haven't had
> any luck. I tried to set the cursor to the default pointer with this
> code (xid is the X window id of the main game window):

[snip code]

> However the above code has no effect on this game. This code does
> change the pointer in other windows I have tried.
>
> Does anyone know what could cause a mouse cursor to not be shown?

I don't know, but I know who to ask.

Wine provides a Microsoft Windows environment running under X on x86 Unix
systems. The MSWindows GUI environment is sufficiently different from X
(both in available controls, and exposed API) that Wine probably does a lot
of work translating between X and MSWindows GUI. It doesn't surprise me
that external X operations fail to have the expected effect on the
MSWindows GUI.

Having said all that, you probably would get a reasonable answer from the
comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine newsgroup, or through the WineHQ help tools
(http://www.winehq.org/help/) (WineHQ is the source of Wine)

HTH
--
Lew Pitcher

[Charlie]

I tried posting in the wine forums but haven't had any luck either:

http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=15763

I realize wine is for ms windows programs but the end result has to
be an x window. What confuses me is what could cause an x window to
ignore mouse cursor functions. Even if it was an opengl window,
which it probably is, it still should respond to setting a new
cursor. A quick look at the glX functions shows no function to set a
window's cursor.

Any ideas?

Thanks again,
Charlie

[FredK]

You didn't mention what this game was. Is it possible that the game itself keeps setting its own cursor? I have several apps that set the cursor to a specific one in response to WindowEntered events.

[Charlie]

The game is "M1 Tank Platoon II" running under Wine. I think the
game hides the normal cursor and makes a fake one with a direct x
texture. The invisible cursor problem is only with the menus. The
game play cursor is visible.

I don't even get a cursor for a split second when I try using that
code like the game itself or wine was setting it back. I don't think
X generates an events when the cursor changes so the game really
shouldn't know if it was changed. Strange issue.

I did make a fairly good workaround. I use a key to grab the mouse
pointer with the desktop then I can see the cursor anywhere. I just
hit the same key again to turn the grab off or left click to turn
off when the pointer is where I want it. Not quite what I wanted but
it works.

If anyone knows what is causing the hidden cursor problem I would
like to know.