Example 1: Changing Desktop cursor appearance

Let's assume you are a system administrator. One of the user's on your system has created a new bitmap with scopaint(XC) and wants it to display each time the Desktop processor is busy. The user has named the data pixmap file waiting_d.xbm and the mask pixmap file waiting_m.xbm. Both files are temporarily stored in the user's $HOME directory.

The following steps result in a new Desktop cursor that appears in the user's Graphical Environment when the Desktop processor is busy. Either root or the user can make this change. Let's assume you do this change for the user as the system administrator, logged in as root.

1. Change directories to the user's $HOME directory and locate the files named waiting_d.xbm and waiting_m.xbm. The user's $HOME directory is not a very appropriate place to store Desktop cursors, so you decide these files need to be moved to a more appropriate picture directory.

2. Create a picture subdirectory called /Picture in the user's $HOME/.xdt_dir/bitmaps directory, and move waiting_d.xbm and waiting_m.xbm to this new directory.

3. Now look for the file named $HOME/XDesktop3. For the purposes of this example, let's assume this file already exists. (You will copy the relevant lines from the Desktop default resource file, /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/XDesktop3, into this XDesktop3 file.)
   

4. Change directories to /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults, then search the XDesktop3 file for the lines that contain the resource that displays the busy cursor on the Desktop, *busy.data and *busy.mask.
   

5. Copy the lines that contain the cursor value for this resource to $HOME/XDesktop3, and comment out the the two lines containing the cursor value so that the file now looks like this:

      ! Name: xdt3.busy.data
      ! Class: XDesktop3.Cursor.Bitmap
      ! Default: Internal picture
      !*busy.data : wait_d.xbm
   

   and

      ! Name: xdt3.busy.mask
      ! Class: XDesktop3.Cursor.Bitmap
      ! Default: Internal picture
      !*busy.mask : wait_m.xbm
   

6. Now open a line immediately below both resources, and enter your new resource designations:
   
   XDesktop3*busy.data: $HOME/.xdt_dir/bitmaps/Pictures/waiting_d.xbm
   XDesktop3*busy.mask: $HOME/.xdt_dir/bitmaps/Pictures/waiting_m.xbm

7. Save and exit the XDesktop3 file.

8. When the user runs the Desktop, and the Desktop processor is busy, the user's new cursor should appear.