--- /dev/null
- Linux now has some ability to manipulate cursor appearance. Normally, you
- can set the size of hardware cursor (and also work around some ugly bugs in
- those miserable Trident cards [#f1]_. You can now play a few new tricks:
- you can make your cursor look
-
- like a non-blinking red block, make it inverse background of the character it's
- over or to highlight that character and still choose whether the original
- hardware cursor should remain visible or not. There may be other things I have
- never thought of.
+Software cursor for VGA
+=======================
+
+by Pavel Machek <pavel@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz>
+and Martin Mares <mj@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz>
+
- .. [#f1] see ``#define TRIDENT_GLITCH`` in ``drivers/video/vgacon.c``.
-
++Linux now has some ability to manipulate cursor appearance. Normally,
++you can set the size of hardware cursor. You can now play a few new
++tricks: you can make your cursor look like a non-blinking red block,
++make it inverse background of the character it's over or to highlight
++that character and still choose whether the original hardware cursor
++should remain visible or not. There may be other things I have never
++thought of.
+
+The cursor appearance is controlled by a ``<ESC>[?1;2;3c`` escape sequence
+where 1, 2 and 3 are parameters described below. If you omit any of them,
+they will default to zeroes.
+
+first Parameter
+ specifies cursor size::
+
+ 0=default
+ 1=invisible
+ 2=underline,
+ ...
+ 8=full block
+ + 16 if you want the software cursor to be applied
+ + 32 if you want to always change the background color
+ + 64 if you dislike having the background the same as the
+ foreground.
+
+ Highlights are ignored for the last two flags.
+
+second parameter
+ selects character attribute bits you want to change
+ (by simply XORing them with the value of this parameter). On standard
+ VGA, the high four bits specify background and the low four the
+ foreground. In both groups, low three bits set color (as in normal
+ color codes used by the console) and the most significant one turns
+ on highlight (or sometimes blinking -- it depends on the configuration
+ of your VGA).
+
+third parameter
+ consists of character attribute bits you want to set.
+
+ Bit setting takes place before bit toggling, so you can simply clear a
+ bit by including it in both the set mask and the toggle mask.
+
+Examples
+--------
+
+To get normal blinking underline, use::
+
+ echo -e '\033[?2c'
+
+To get blinking block, use::
+
+ echo -e '\033[?6c'
+
+To get red non-blinking block, use::
+
+ echo -e '\033[?17;0;64c'