cursor disapears when moving back along the command

[nicwest]

ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_HIGHLIGHTERS=(main brackets pattern cursor)

steps to reproduce:

1. open gnome-terminal under ubuntu
2. enter command
3. press the left arrow key (←)

I'm noticing that on gnome-terminal on ubuntu 15.04 that when I move back along a previous typed command the cursor disappears.

In tmux 1.9 the cursor is visible but it displays the character under cursor in italics (this may be intended, I'm unsure).

I have also experienced this issue with arch on urxvt, but identical config files on OSX seems to work fine.

[nicwest]

removing the cursor highlighter fixed this issue.

Doh

[phunehehe]

I just noticed this too. Strange that I only see this in gnome-terminal and not konsole. Makes me wonder the intended use case for the cursor highlighter though.

[danielshahaf]

gnome-terminal has a blinking cursor. The blinking cycle restarts whenever the cursor is moved. I'm guessing what happens is: you press ← several times quickly; each press restarts the cursor blinking cycle; the cycle starts with the cursor in black, but the default cursor highlighting, which is standout, applies on top of that and makes the cursor transparent for the first half of the cycle; so, the end result is the cursor is transparent until half a second after it stops moving.

You could try:

typeset -A ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_STYLES
ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_STYLES[cursor]=underline

[phunehehe]

@danielshahaf you are right about everything :)
I'm not sure what the cursor highligher brings to the table, though. The docs doesn't say anything and with your snippet, it behaves just like cursor is disabled. Can you give an example?

[danielshahaf]

@phunehehe A simple example is:

% ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_HIGHLIGHTERS=(main cursor)
% typeset -A ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_STYLES    
% ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_STYLES=(cursor bold)
% source zsh-syntax-highlighting.zsh

to make the character under the cursor bold. See "Character Highlighting" in zshzle(1) for the available highlighting styles. I'm guessing the default (which is standout, i.e., reverse video) is useful to turn a "vertical bar" cursor into a "box" cursor without changing the terminal emulator's configuration.

[phunehehe]

thanks, that surely clears things up!