Version: (using KDE KDE 3.3.0) Installed from: Debian testing/unstable Packages Option to make mouse disappear then using keyboard. Why show the cursor then it is not needed? This is implemented in konsole, but the global one would be handy.
It's globally available to application that wish to use it, konqueror uses it for example.
Yes, it's globally available to _KDE_ application that wish to use it. But I have KDE desktop and Motif application and I can't use it.
In my opinion, the mouse disappearance behaviour is naturally associated with the *desktop*---more so than with individual applications (even if some types of applications, like those showing full-screen images, also might want to control this). I was really surprised when I yesterday found out that there is no such setting in control center. The user wants to be able to make the decision "I want the mouse to disappear if I don't use it" regardless of which window it sits over. This feature exists in Windows XP (not necessarily a good argument) and I remember that the Amiga had several open source tools for implementing this for the desktop.
*** Bug 118503 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 131483 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 77062 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***
Isn't it possible to fix this behaviour? I thought that the cursor was never hidden when I typed because of some obscure config option which I missed somewhere. And by the way, if it is already possible to handle this on KDE applications and having in mind that, as it is easy to see, this feature is expected by whoever uses KDE, why not turn on the cursor hiding by default and then enable the applications to turn it off if they want?
Found a work around http://packages.debian.org/sid/unclutter
unclutter does not work here as I would like it to behave. The mouse cursor can be hidden after a timeout but not on keypress. The man page gives the following note: LIMITATIONS The -keystroke option may not work (that is, the cursor will not disappear) with clients that request KeyRelease events. Games and Xt applications using KeyUp in their translation tables are most likely to suffer from this problem. The most feasible solution is to extend unclutter to use the XTest extension to get all keyboard and mouse events, though this of course requires XTest to be in the server too.
This would be very useful for mobile devices since you do not want a mouse cursor on a touchscreen. So completely disabling it would be another variant of the "hide mouse cursor" issue.
Seems reasonable. We might be able to do this in plasma-integration, perhaps with some KWin work.
I'd also like to request that this can be disabled globally, rather than be hard-coded by application. If this is addressed elsewhere I couldn't find it. Other DEs, and Windows, seem to take a global approach to this issue.