Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!bellcore!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!isis!nyx!jgriffit
From: jgriffit@nyx.UUCP (Jonathan C. Griffitts)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Hardware mice pointers
Message-ID: <1308@nyx.UUCP>
Date: 16 Jun 90 03:30:47 GMT
References: <136288@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <6537@vax1.acs.udel.EDU> <11876@cbmvax.commodore.com> <2264@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <WAYNE.90Jun14082016@ds
Reply-To: jgriffit@nyx.UUCP (Jonathan C. Griffitts)
Organization: Public Access Unix - University of Denver
Lines: 23

In article <W3048HB@xds13.ferranti.com> peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>Or you can just write new X and Y values into the hardware mouse pointer
>registers and forget about it. Why haven't hardware pointers caught on, then?
>It can't be the hardware cost or complexity: the necessary hardware has been
>part of cheap 8-bit computers for the past 10 years.

I was involved in designing the architecture of a RISC workstation a couple 
of years ago.  We put in a hardware cursor manager (rather full-featured,
including storage for both cursor shape and mask for up to 64x64 pixels,
and "overlay" pallette options for the cursor).
We were told by the people that were doing the X windows port
that they didn't want a hardware mouse cursor and that they wouldn't use it
if they had it.  We designed it in anyway, as an optional feature that
could be omitted in Manufacturing.  This system did go into production (and
is still being sold) but I do not know if the hardware cursor feature is
being used.

In case this issue comes up again, I'd like to know what the consensus is 
about this.  Can X windows take advantage of a hardware mouse cursor?

				Jonathan Griffitts
				AnyWare Engineering, Boulder CO
				(303) 442-0556