Cursors

In Indie, you can set the cursor to be any 16x16 color picture you'd like.

Editing Cursors

Cursors are not directly editable in Indie. You can edit them in ResEdit or any other Mac resources editor.

In ResEdit, make a new file and save it, calling it something ending in ".rsrc". Make a new resource (choose "Make a New Resource" from the Resources menu). Choose type "crsr", which is a color cursor.

Make as many cursors as you'd like there. Each one will be assigned an ID, or a number. Write this number down someplace. In a blank file, the numbers normally start with 128.

When you're finished with your artistic endeavor, save the file and close it. You must close the file or else Indie won't be able to open it.

Setting a cursor with a trigger

Currently, setting cursors violates the normal Indie conventions about models and interfaces. Even though the cursor is clearly an interface object, you set it through the model action interface. This is a hack and a kludge and we all hate it.

To set a cursor, use a trigger. Make a trigger and attach it to any old event you happen to like (like a button click, for instance). Make a new model-action of type "Set Cursor Model Action". Now type in the ID of your crsr resource (remember that random little number?).

If you want a normal cursor back, you can do "Reset Cursor" model action. If you don't want to have to find the button that resets it, but are tired of using your gas sampler as your text editor, you can type (cursors:reset-cursor) into the Messages window.

Warning! Screwing around with cursors is the most likely way you can totally hose Indie and make it all blow up. Though I do as much error-checking as I can, if you make a bad res file, bad karma could easily go down. Save early and often.


Last modified 1/27/98 ST 1/27/98