Binary package hint: unclutter
Ubuntu 9.04
unclutter Installed: 8-9
What is expected:
Cursor should disappear and stay gone when mouse is idle for a specified time.
What happened instead:
unclutter works as expected in many cases, e.g. when pointing at a web browser display window in Firefox. But it seems that in many GTK applications, pointing the cursor at a blank area of the app causes the cursor to flutter/blink/flash very quickly off and on after the specified -idle time. Not only does the cursor flutter, but Xorg begins to take up ~50% of CPU capacity on my 2.4 GHz P4 (according to xosview and top). Qt applications seem unaffected. Shaking the mouse causes the cursor to reappear normally and not flash, and CPU usage to go back to ~0%. But as soon as the idle period is over, the cursor begins to flash again.
An example of an app. that consistently exhibits the flashing cursor behavior is Open Office word processor--point to a blank document window, or to an empty spot on the menubar, and the cursor begins flashing. However, I have seen this behavior in many other GTK apps, not just Open Office. I see that gcalctool (Applications->Accessories->Calculator), for example, also exhibits the behavior. gcalctool + unclutter causes 100% CPU usage (about 50% user and 50% system) between gcalctool, metacity, and Xorg, according to top and xosview. To see the behavior, point the cursor at a _blank_ area of the widget canvas; pointing it at one of the number keys, for example, does not show the behavior.
Does running unclutter with the -noevents flag cause it to behave as expected?