[Taipan]

Hi!

I have just installed the October ATI update on my Umax S900 with G3/440MHz and Radeon PCI, and now my mouse pointer has got a wgite outline and even something that one might call a shadow. I had tried the Quartz Extreme on PCI hack once, and thought I might not have turned it off again, contrary to what my memory told me. So I started Quartz Extreme Check, and it told me that my display was not accelerated. Shouldn't the shadow (I assume the few dark pixels below the outline is the shadow I heard people talk about?) be visible only on QE accelerated displays (not that I`m complaining, I like it).
Also, I just recognize that the pointer disappears as I'm typing. Ihaven't recognized this before, either. Is this also new? Anyone with PCI graphics who can comment? Thanks!

[smeger]

I think that this means that your machine now supports a "hardware cursor." This means that the graphics card handles the task of saving what's under the cursor and redrawing it after the cursor moves elsewhere.

A "software cursor" would have the operating system say "hey, the user moved the mouse to (25,52). Let's go stick the current contents of the screen in this memory location over here and draw the mouse pointer there, then when it moves, we'll go fetch what we'd saved and redraw it."

Hardware cursor systems support meese larger than 16x16 pixels (i.e., the drop shadow mouse).

But, I'm missing something in this description because the Finder displays a large cursor on all machines when you copy or alias a file.

So, to sum up, I think the ATI update has enabled hardware cursor on some systems. And, yeah, I know the plural of 'mouse' isn't 'meese.' And I just woke up from a nap, so I'm probably totally incoherent...

[dwishbone]

everything working great on my Radeon 7000. system is much faster. thanks ATI.

[Taipan]

Smeger, thanks for the explanation. I also asked this on a German board, and they told me the white outline had always been there. Is this true? I'm not quite sure, but something seems very different, maybe it's just that the shadow visually emphasizes the outline?

[cwasko]

Originally posted by Taipan:
Smeger, thanks for the explanation. I also asked this on a German board, and they told me the white outline had always been there. Is this true? I'm not quite sure, but something seems very different, maybe it's just that the shadow visually emphasizes the outline?

Exactly. The white outline has always been there... even back to System 1.0 (to the best of my knowledge). However, with the shadow, it is way more noticeable due to the contrast.