Re: mouse-face property and pointer property makes pointer change back and forth

[Mauro Aranda]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Mauro Aranda <maurooaranda@gmail.com>
>> Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2025 20:29:08 -0300
>>
>> My guess is that there's a conflict with specifying
>> arrow as the pointer together with specifying
>> a mouse-face, but I didn't see anything in the
>> manual that indicates that the pointer is always
>> hand if there's a mouse-face property.
>
> Yes, the 'pointer' property, when non-nil, overrides the cursor shape
> determined from other sources, including the area of the Emacs display
> and the mouse-highlighted text.
>
>> i took a look at xdisp.c and maybe show_mouse_face
>> draws the hand pointer unconditionally.  I know
>> nothing about xdisp.c though.  Any ideas?
>
> show_mouse_face does that for the mouse-face property.  But the
> note_mouse_highlight can override that if it finds the 'pointer'
> property at the same position (see where it calls define_frame_cursor1
> at its end).
>
> I guess we should document that the 'pointer' property always wins.
>
> However, the above doesn't explain why you don't see an arrow
> although the 'pointer' property specifies it.  I do see the arrow,
> but that's on MS-Windows.

I see the arrow, yes, when specifying the pointer property, and what you
say explains it clearly.  But the problem is not with who wins (in my
case, I do want the arrow winning, so that's fine).  The problem is
with having to watch the battle :-).

I haven't tried this on MS-Windows, but here I see the back and forth
change I described (the battle):

In GNU Emacs 31.0.50 (build 13, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version
 3.24.33, cairo version 1.16.0) of 2025-01-29 built on tbb-desktop
Repository revision: 142fe5ace4e5d4ed667505f73fc95757a764d530
Repository branch: master
Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12201001
System Description: Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS