Re: [vile] blinking cursor wiht WinVile?

[Gary Jennejohn]

On Sun, 06 Apr 2014 09:35:17 -0400
Thomas Dickey <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 06, 2014 at 03:18:20PM +0200, Gary Jennejohn wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > Whenever I'm forced to work with Windows I alwasy install WinVile.
> > At the moment I have a contract which requires using Windows.
> > 
> > At the customer site I some how managed to get a blinking cursor
> > in WinVile, but I have no idae how I did it.
> > 
> > I'd also like to have a blinking cursor at home.  Makes it a lot
> > easier to find it.
> > 
> > Of course, it's easy under UNIX, but I haven't been able to find
> > any useful information for Windows.
> > 
> > So, is it possible?
> 
> vile's not doing anything specific for this (I didn't recall, but grep
> would have shown me).  But I see a clue in ntwinio.c in a comment:
> 
>           /*
>            * This is the undocumented (as near as I can tell)
>            * WM_SYSTIMER event that seems to occur whenever the caret
>            * blinks.  This is a background "noise" event that can
>            * be ignored once dispatched.
>            */
> 
> Referring to
> 
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms646968%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms648397%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms648404%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
> 
> and
> 
> http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/208107-cursor-blink-rate-set.html
> 
> it seems that allowing the caret (the drawn cursor) to blink is a feature
> introduced in Vista, and might be configurable outside winvile as indicated
> on the last page mentioned.  If so, it's a global setting (which means that
> winvile shouldn't do this, itself).
> 
> (I added a to-do item, though at the moment I'm deep in byacc and have xterm
> next...).
> 

Thanks.

Turns out that the blink rate was already set.

I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate at home and Windows 7 Pro at the customer
site.

Blinking works in e.g. Notepad and WinEd, but not in WinVile :(  Seems
like Windows doesn't recognize the cursor in WinVile to be a caret, as
Microsoft calls it.  Interestingly enough, both Notepad and MinEd use
a vertical line for the cursor, whereas WinVile is using a block.  Can't
say whether that really matters.

Too bad.  Still a mystery to me why it works at the customer site.

-- 
Gary Jennejohn