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Accepted
Stephen Boston
Asked: 2018-04-25 09:12:08 +0800 CST

Libreoffice writer: typing cursor appearance (not mouse pointer)

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When editing a text in LO writer I will often lose the typing cursor and have to enter text or move the direction keys to create movement on the page so that I can find the cursor. Is there a way of enlarging the typing cursor or making it more obvious?

The LO forum has fixes for Windows, but I haven't found one for Linux.

Note that I am not talking about the mouse cursor here. I can easily modify the size and color of the mouse cursor, and make it ripple with the control key, but this is not about the mouse cursor. This is the tiny little cursor that marks the editing position in the document.

@DK Bose Here's from the libreoffice About menu

libreoffice
Version: 6.0.3.2
Build ID: 1:6.0.3-0ubuntu1
OS: Linux 4.15; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3; 
Locale: en-CA (en_CA.UTF-8); Calc: group

Desktop MATE/Marco

Theme: GreenLaguna, text-editable css files

Thanks.

libreoffice

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    In newer configurations with compiled gtk themes, you just need to add this to ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css. Create the file if it doesn't exist.

    * { -GtkWidget-cursor-aspect-ratio: 0.2; }
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  2. I have LibreOffice 6.0.3.2 in 16.04 via the fresh ppa.

    GTK3 themes maybe easily modified by the user or they may not: the latter are compiled and will have files like /usr/share/themes/Numix/gtk-3.0/**gtk.gresource and a folder like /usr/share/themes/Numix/gtk-3.0/scss.

    What follows isn't easily possible to do with compiled themes.

    If you have a gtk3 theme you can edit, open its gtk-widgets.css with a plain text editor and, a few lines from the top of the file, look for something like:

    /* default */
* {
-GtkArrow-arrow-scaling: 0.6;
-GtkButton-child-displacement-x: 0;
-GtkButton-child-displacement-y: 0;
-GtkButton-default-border: 0;
-GtkButton-image-spacing: 0;
***..... lines deleted .....***
-GtkTextView-error-underline-color: @error_color;
-GtkToolButton-icon-spacing: 6;
-GtkToolItemGroup-expander-size: 11;
-GtkTreeView-expander-size: 11;
-GtkWidget-focus-line-width: 0;
-GtkWidget-focus-padding: 0;
-GtkWidget-link-color: @link_color;
-GtkWidget-visited-link-color: @link_color;
-GtkWindow-resize-grip-height: 13;
-GtkWindow-resize-grip-width: 13;
-WnckTasklist-fade-overlay-rect: 0;
background-clip: padding-box;
outline-color: alpha(@theme_fg_color, 0.3);
outline-style: dashed;
outline-offset: 2px;
-GtkWidget-cursor-aspect-ratio: 0.2;
}

    What is important is the last line with -GtkWidget-cursor-aspect-ratio: 0.2; which may not be present normally. You will need to add it. If you are modifying the theme in usr/share/themes, keep in mind, you'll need elevated privileges to edit the file and that an update to the theme may require you to edit the file all over again.

    I prefer to copy over entire themes to ~/.themes and to rename the top theme folder to something convenient that I can tell them apart.

    Without a line dealing with -GtkWidget-cursor-aspect-ratio, you'll have a thin insertion bar:

    Thin

    If you edit the value to 0.1, you'll have a thick bar:

    Thick

    And, if you edit the value to 0.2, you'll have an even thicker bar:

    Thicker

    Note that this will affect all your applications that use gtk3.

    Credit to: caret-color and caret-width

    • 3

  3. I found Mark's answer to work, however, I had to write the file to ~/.config/gtk-2.0/gtk.css.

    I using Libreoffice Version: 6.0.7.3 on Ubuntu 18.04 4.18.0-16 (64 bit)

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