Blanc cursor theme

Blanc is a cursor theme for X11. All icons are white («blanc» is the french for «white»), with classic shapes and a strong contrast : contours are bold, black and a little blurry.

How to use

You only have to issue

make install

on a command line open in this directory and the theme «Blanc» should show up next time you run your favourite appearance settings dialog.

If you plan on packaging this theme for your favourite distribution, you might want instead to type something like

make install DESTDIR=pkg/usr/share/icons

if you’re building the package in directory pkg.

Dependencies

You obviously need make if you choose to follow the above instructions but you can still manage to build the theme just fine as long as you have

• sh : a shell script is used to generate each icon in the theme by deciding whether it’s an actual cursor file or a link to another one
• xcursorgen : the X11 tool to actually create a cursor file from a bunch of pictures and a config file

Origins

The design is not original : the icons were extracted from the White theme that was shipped with a hacked version of Windows XP, namely Windows XP LSD in its 3.5 version. That version of Windows and X11 don’t provide exactly the same cursor states so most of them were mapped more or less gently to the nearest corresponding state. Some are completely missing, which explains the lack of cursors for zooming actions for instance.

Want to give a hand ?

First, you can use the theme and give feedback ! It’s always appreciated. You can also draw icons to fill the lacks of the original theme and make a pull request. Most wanted icons concern :

• Zooming : completely missing from the original theme
• Directions (double arrows are a bit overused and specialized version could be made to distinguish among all the possible cases)
• the default (left_ptr, etc.) cursor usually exists with an additional pictogram in the lower-right corner to represent «working in the background», or drag-and-drop related actions : copy, link or the impossibility to do so. Only the «working in the background» cursor existed in White.