GdkCursor

GdkCursor is used to create and destroy cursors.

Cursors are immutable objects, so once you created them, there is no way to modify them later. You should create a new cursor when you want to change something about it.

Cursors by themselves are not very interesting: they must be bound to a window for users to see them. This is done with gdk_surface_set_cursor() or gdk_surface_set_device_cursor(). Applications will typically use higher-level GTK functions such as gtk_widget_set_cursor() instead.

Cursors are not bound to a given GdkDisplay, so they can be shared. However, the appearance of cursors may vary when used on different platforms.

Named and texture cursors

There are multiple ways to create cursors. The platform’s own cursors can be created with gdk_cursor_new_from_name(). That function lists the commonly available names that are shared with the CSS specification. Other names may be available, depending on the platform in use. On some platforms, what images are used for named cursors may be influenced by the cursor theme.

Another option to create a cursor is to use gdk_cursor_new_from_texture() and provide an image to use for the cursor.

To ease work with unsupported cursors, a fallback cursor can be provided. If a GdkSurface cannot use a cursor because of the reasons mentioned above, it will try the fallback cursor. Fallback cursors can themselves have fallback cursors again, so it is possible to provide a chain of progressively easier to support cursors. If none of the provided cursors can be supported, the default cursor will be the ultimate fallback.