RE: Changing the mouse pointer shape in terminal.

[Luke Nath]

>  Subject: Re: Changing the mouse pointer shape in terminal.
>  From: ignored_mailbox(a)yahoo.com.au
>  To: users(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2014 01:01:18 +1030
>  
>  Allegedly, on or about 30 January 2014, Luke Nath sent:
>  > How do I change the mouse pointer shape in mate-terminal
>  > or gnome-terminal , from the fleur to a left pointing arrow head? 
>  
>  To attempt that, you're going to have to fight against the system which
>  uses long-standing conventions of altering the mouse pointer to indicate
>  what sorts of things it can do with where it's currently placed:
>  
>        * I-beam pointer shape - you can copy text under the pointer into
>          a buffer, or click into that space and type into it (the text
>          isn't read-only).
>        * Arrow pointer - what's under the mouse can be moved (dragged),
>          or selected (clicked on).
>        * Hand pointer - what's under the mouse can be followed as a link
>          (e.g. links to internet addresses in webpages and emails).
>        * Busy-indicator - You can't currently do something with the mouse
>          (could be anything, or just what's under the mouse), because
>          some other process needs to complete, first.
>  
>  And that's just the four that spring to mind, at the moment.  There may
>  be others.
>  
>  If you try and take away that functionality, you turn reading various
>  things into guessing games of what's just readable text, and what could
>  be interacted with, because you've taken away the mouse pointer hints,
>  and authors keep on taking away the hints that the user-agents provide
>  to indicate the type of page content (e.g. webpages where the links
>  aren't coloured, nor underlined).  It becomes a game of hovering over
>  things, trying to find links.  Or randomly clicking on things, in the
>  hopes that you can find the link.
>  
>  If you really want to do that - and I've never seen anyone argue that
>  point with sensible justifications - look into how to customise the
>  shape of the mouse cursor, and use the same image for each type of
>  function.
>   

Thank you for a very lucid explanation.
In gnome-terminal or mate-terminal, I have never seen the pointer shape
become anything but the I beam. I use mostly vi or cat or more or less
or type scripts. These are pretty much the text apps I use.
In all of these "commands", the shape remains the I beam.
Is there a way to change it to a left pointer just in the mate or
gnome terminal?

P.S: I recall that I used to be able to set it to left ptr in Xterm when
I used to use BSD Unix.