animated cursors for GNOME?

[MR ZenWiz]

On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 2:35 AM, Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au> wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> My daughter has seen lots of whizz-bang custom cursors on the 'Net, but
> they are all for Windows. She wants amazing cursors to use on her Ubuntu
> system.
>
That's what happens when you have kids who want to use computers....

:-)

> I've checked out the various GNOME cursor sets, including some very nice
> ones at gnome-look.org, but the basic problem is that they are
> "booooring" - i.e., they are just pointers :-)
>
> Are there such things as animated dragon cursors, spinning beach balls
> and whatnot for GNOME? If so, where does one get them from?
>
> I did find something in the repos that allegedly extracts icons and
> cursors from Windows resource bundles, but thought I would find out if
> there was a simpler way...
>
Probably not a simpler way.

Even in the "standard" collection there are animated cursors (such as
the "wait while I do this" cursor in Ubuntu with the spinning dot
where the stem of the usual arrow lives).  You can try to locate those
and see what they are, then install your own versions, but I bet it's
simpler to extract them from Windows versions of the same thing.

Caveat: animated cursors for normal operations tend to be distracting
little bastards that will drive a user nuts after a while, even a kid.
 IMO, unless you daughter wants to spend more time looking at the
little moving thing instead of what she's actually on the computer to
do, it's not worth it.