Xfce Forum

Pelicano

Member

Registered: 2020-09-19

Posts: 2

How to use the magnification without magnifying the pointer ?

Hi everyone, I hope you do well ! This is Pelicano.

I've a new computer under Xubuntu 20.04(Xfce 4.14), before I was using another under Xubuntu 18.04(Xfce 4.12).
As I'm a visually impaired person, I'm using the magnifying tool very much, you can use it by pressing [ALT]+[Mouse wheel]. Under Xfce 4.12, when I was doing this, my mouse pointer kept its size : it was not took in county by the magnifier. It was very cool, because since I zoom a lot to read the text, the pointer was not hiding the text. However, under Xfce 4.14, the mouse pointer is took in count by the magnifier, thus, it becomes very big when I zoom a lot and it hides many informations displayed on the screen, like text for example. How can I stop the pointer to get magnified in version 4.14 like it was in version 4.12 ? Is there a way to custom the factor of pointer magnification while using the Xfce magnification tool in a config file for example ?

Note 1 : Here is a video (in French, sorry) I made to show the problem on a French forum : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNekErB39tE
Note 2 : I'm using NVIDIA drivers on the 2 PC, but the problem is not linked to that, because I tryed with the free drivers.
Note 3 : I've tried to change the xfwm4 mode as indicated on the sticky topic in this same forum section, it doesn't change anything. However, I think that the problem can be related to the update of xfwm4.

Thanks in advance !

Pelicano

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,488

Re: How to use the magnification without magnifying the pointer ?

Hello and welcome.

I don't have a 4.12 install handy to double-check, but since you've noticed the change between versions, I would suggest creating a bug report.

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alcornoqui

Member

Registered: 2014-07-28

Posts: 832

Re: How to use the magnification without magnifying the pointer ?

A different approach could be using something like unclutter:

unclutter removes the cursor image from the screen so that it does not obstruct the area you are looking at after it has not moved for a given time. It does not do this if the cursor is in the root window or a button is down.  It tries to ignore jitter (small movements due to noise) if you have a mouse that twitches.

To make it run automatically in Xubuntu, install it (sudo apt install unclutter) and just add an item to Settings > Session and startup > Application autostart. It will be available in your next session.

Mine is:

unclutter -idle 6 -root

Pelicano

Member

Registered: 2020-09-19

Posts: 2

Re: How to use the magnification without magnifying the pointer ?

Hi guys !
Thanks for your answers, I'm going to do a bug report.
Unclutter seems "OK", but not in my case actually, nothing comparable to the time I was using the stock magnifier under 4.12. For this reason, I'll report the bug for some visually impaired people that are in my case maybe.

alcornoqui

Member

Registered: 2014-07-28

Posts: 832

Re: How to use the magnification without magnifying the pointer ?

Oh, the bug report got closed, the feature has been added!

Xfwm4 4.14 made the cursor zoom along with the desktop. While this
sounds like a sensible thing to do, it's not necessarily an improvement
for accessibility, because an enlarged cursor also hides what's being
zoomed underneath.

Add a new option to control whether the pointer is zoomed along with the
rest of the desktop.
Signed-off-by: Olivier Fourdan <fourdan@xfce.org>
Closes: #439