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How do I get aquamacs to show a solid and blinking cursor? http://aquamacs.org/

With a lot of work we managed to get it to show a hollow and blinking box, instead of just a blinking vertical line, but that is often just too hard to see.

Ellen Spertus
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Daniel
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    Your question would be much better if you showed what you had tried so far, rather than just saying that you *have* tried something, but not what that was. – phils Jul 29 '12 at 08:36
  • No, it would have just been a distraction. This question is a simple request for information from someone who needs the problem solved. Your remark and your marking my question down is just harassment. Stop interfering with people who are using the forum in an effort to get actual work done. – Daniel Jul 29 '12 at 17:26
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    Wow. (a) I didn't vote your question down. (b) Showing your work to date almost always improves the question -- both in terms of increasing searchability for other people who have tried the same thing as you, and because an answer is often a case of filling in the missing piece of the puzzle. (Not to mention that people are generally more inclined to help if they can see what has already been tried.) – phils Jul 29 '12 at 18:13
  • @phils Ok, well if you aren't the one who voted me down, then the remark doesn't apply to you. Here is some context: this isn't the first time that I've tried to ask a simple question to which I genuinely needed the answer and instead (a) had people giving me negative points and (b) tell me that I shouldn't have asked the question or did not ask it in the right way, etc. Sometimes people are very persistent in their insistance that I should not have asked the question, despite the fact that I just need to know the answer. I think it's a problem in the way the forum is run. – Daniel Jul 29 '12 at 21:57
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    @phils That said, in many cases showing partial results can help, but for a configuration question, the design of the configuration file language has usually extracted all of the semantic locality out of the problem and all that is left is to ask "how do I do this" ? If I were asking about a fundamental problem, such as "what's the fastest way to sort under these circumstances", then I think you would have a point about showing partial work and partial results. – Daniel Jul 29 '12 at 22:00
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    For the record, I briefly considered downvoting the question myself. When you write "With a lot of work we managed ...", but don't show what you did exactly, that's like deliberately teasing. Sure, the explanation wouldn't have helped in this case, but the phrase looks too similar to the classic "Doesn't work!" in bug reports. – Dmitry Jul 30 '12 at 02:59

3 Answers3

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This works with NT Emacs:

(blink-cursor-mode)

Should work with Aquamacs, too.

If the cursor is not a solid box (here, by default, it is), add

(setq-default cursor-type 'box)
Dmitry
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    Oh happy day! Thank you so much! Wow, it is so much easier to see. Thank you, thank you! – Daniel Jul 29 '12 at 17:28
  • No problem. By the way, to get to that answer, I pressed "C-h a" (`apropos` command), typed "blink" there, then read the descriptions until I got to the `blink-cursor-mode`, which was the 10th result. – Dmitry Jul 30 '12 at 03:02
  • Thank you -- I was searching Google for block cursor instead of box. Ctrl+h v cursor-type RET -- t | nil | box | hollow | bar | (bar . WIDTH) | hbar | (hbar . HEIGHT). Also, customize specific options from the menubar (Aquamacs 2.4) -- cursor-type. – lawlist Apr 17 '13 at 23:49
  • `(setq-default cursor-type 'box)` -- Finally I can easily see which buffer contains the blinking cursor in Aquamacs! And when the red cursor covers a character, the font color of the character turns white, making everything easy to read. Thanks! – – 7stud Mar 27 '17 at 00:32
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You might want to backup the unidentified file in which the setq-default is to be added, in my case the ~/.emacs* file I edited was replaced in total by something that did not include my setq addition and eliminated some other non global section (I had two non global sections before my cursor change, now I have one).

¿Perhaps the Aquamacs emacs config to be edited is contained elsewhere?

jvandegrift
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In Aquamacs, a convenient way to set up a filled box cursor globally is to use the command:

M-x customize

Then in the search box in the customizations buffer, type in "cursor type" and press the search button. The cursor requested is called "box".

Cris P
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