TailDragger is an INIT that animates the arrow and pencil cursors so that they rotate to drag about on the screen. This animation is just a visual effect achieved by displaying different cursor images as the mouse moves. It does not affect the pointing position of the mouse in any way.
I wrote TailDragger for the Macintosh cursor after having done a very successful tail-dragging 3D cursor. The 3D implementation inferred yaw and pitch from the moving point of the cursor. (It handled roll by damping it.) This version infers rotation from the moving point of the 2D cursor.
You may find several advantages when using TailDragger:
• The cursor doesn’t disappear off the bottom and right edges of the screen
• The cursor appears more “alive,” thus may be a better extension of your hand
• Small moves of the cursor are made more visually apparent
• You can swing the tail of the pencil cursor out of the way of your work
I will leave it to you to judge the success of TailDragger, and come up with your own list of disadvantages.
INSTALLATION
Drag TailDragger into the System Folder of your startup disk and restart your machine. You will see the TailDragger icon appear while the Macintosh is booting.
HOW IT WORKS
TailDragger patches the SetCursor and ShowCursor toolbox traps. The SetCursor patch notices when an application sets the cursor to one of a few “key cursors,” i. e. the arrow cursor and a few versions of the pencil cursor. Subsequent ShowCursor traps change the one of the about 32 images of the key cursor drawn at different rotations.
It chooses which rotated image to show by a simple method. A “tail” position is kept for the mouse. Whenever the mouse moves, it establishes a new “head” position. TailDragger chooses a moves the tail so it is a certain distance from the new head and lies on the line between the new head and the old tail. The rotated image is chosen to match the angle described by that line.
TailDragger doesn’t change the way the Macintosh moves the “hotspot” of the cursor, just the way the cursor appears on the screen.
PROBLEMS
TailDragger should work with most Macintosh configurations. It does not work with most other cursor-altering INITs, e. g. ColorCursor or CursorAnimator, etc.
