1 XACURSOR 
Set an animated cursor in a window

SYNOPSIS
  $ xacursor    [-d display] [-r] [-fg color] [-bg color]
                [-path directory] [-cursor file] [-mask file]
                [-wait msecond] [-m swing | random | rswing | vibrate]
                [-demo] [-h]    [file]

2 DESCRIPTION
Upon execution, the cursor will be changed to a musical note, the window then 
selected by the user will have its cursor changed to an animated one, 
using the paths of the cursor bitmap files listed in -file.  
If the -r option is specified, the cursor of the root window will be
changed.

If -cursor file are passed in the command line, the cursor will be
changed to the one specified.  -demo shows the standard demonstration.

Please note that not all windows allow you to make a cursor change.


By default, xacursor
sets the cursor to be the bitmaps in the sequence listed in "file", which are
specified in the following manner:

    cursor[1]    mask[1]    foreground[1]    background[1]
    cursor[2]    mask[2]    foreground[2]    background[2]
       .            .            .                .
       .            .            .                .
    cursor[n]    mask[n]    foreground[n]    background[n]

where "cursor[i]" and "mask[i]" are the paths of the cursor file and the mask
file; "foreground[i]" and "background[i]" are the foreground and
background colors, so the cursor can have changing
colors.  If omited, the mask is defaulted to be the cursor file; the
two colors are set to be black and white respectively, unless otherwise 
specified by the user.


xacursor
ignores all blank lines, spaces and tabs; lines beginning with the "#"
character are comments.  All tokens "NA" are treated as place holder and will
be ignored as well, so if one does not want to specified the mask file,
the line may look like:

    e.g.  fire1.xbm    NA    goldenrod    midnightblue


2  OPTIONS

  -d display          Specifies the display that should be used.


  -r                  The cursor of the root window will be changed,
                      the user will not be asked to specified a window.


  -fg color           The foreground color of the cursor,
                      defaulted to be black.


  -bg color           The background color of the cursor,
                      defaulted to be white.


  -cursor file        Using this option, the user can set the
                      cursor to "file", which is not animated.


  -mask file          The path of the mask file, defaulted to
                      be the cursor file if omited.  In the
                      case of multiple cursors (as listed in
                      "file"}, it serves as the default mask file
                      for all cursors, unless it is otherwise
                      specified in the cursor list.


  -path directory     The directory in which all the specified
                      bitmaps can be found, so the user does not need to
                      type the full path of the bitmap files.  This path
                      is optional.


  -mode swing | random | rswing | vibrate
                      The way the cursors are animated.  By default,
                      the cursor will be animated in the
                      sequence "first to last" as specified in "file".

                      "swing" mode makes the cursors changes from
                      the 1st one to the last one, go back to the
                      1st one in reverse order, then start from
                      the 1st one again; and so on and so forth.

                      While "random" mode makes them appear in
                      random orders.
                     
                      "rswing" is just swing except the cursors
                      changes from the 1st one to one that is
                      picked at random, go back to the 1st one
                      in reverse order; then start again from the
                      1st one.
                    
                      Being a little like "rswing", "vibrate" picks
                      2 random bitmap "a" and "b" when starts,
                      change the bitmap from "a" to "b"; then picks
                      another random bitmap "c", and goes from "b"
                     to "c", and so on.


  -wait msecond       Wait for "msecond" number of milli-
                      seconds between successive changes of the
                      cursor.  By default, "msecond" cannot be smaller
                      then 10, otherwise 10 will be used.  The
                      default is 200 msec.


  -demo               Show the standard demonstration, which is a
                      rotating earth.  This can be combined with other
                      options like "-fg", "-mode" and "-wait" to get
                      a unique appearance.


  -h                  Display the help message.

2 FILE

  file                The cursor list, contains relative pathnames
                      of cursors to be animated, subject to the
                      presence or absence of "-path", as
                      specified above.




2 AUTHOR
xacursor is written by Kam-Hung WONG (k2wong@noether.math.uwaterloo.ca),
4th year Computer Science student at University of Waterloo, Canada.
(WWW: http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/~k2wong)

Thanks goes to Victor S. H. Wong and Hilda Lee, for their fine
efforts of drawing many interesting bitmaps for demonstration
purposes.

This is a small work, but I would like to dedicate it to friends
at the Faculty of Mathematics, because of whom these years become
so memorable.

Further improvements to the application will be made, if the author 
survives the Real-time Programming course. :-)

2 VMS_PORT
Patrick Moreau, CENA/Athis-Mons - FRANCE (pmoreau@cena.dgac.fr)

