@flummoxed

Devlog #2: Successfully got .ani hotspot value

To read the .ani file, I had to go through a lot of trouble. .ani files are binary files, which means a a weird amount of struggle regarding reading them. And it’s not as simple as reading a .cur file, since .ani files are dynamic in their number of bytes.

After fighting the internet for an ani-file parser, and a LOT of struggle with that ani-file library… being outdated… I went in and edited the issues with the ani-file library, still struggled to get it working… and gave up eventually.

I resorted to Gemini to help me debug the issue. Got it working finally! A little note: did have to fight the AI as well to get it to work… but here it is! Now I have hotspot values for both .cur and .ani cursors… and the hard part is done I believe. (I hope I didn’t jinx myself…)

Devlog #1: Began writing a program to convert Windows cursors into usable Mac cursors

Here we go. I’ve been quite irritated at the inability to find cursors that run with Mousecape, a program built to change your cursor for mac. Most are built for Windows, which is easier to put in custom cursors with. I believe this has been done by some other people; however they didn’t work… perhaps due to my human error, so I thought it would be a good idea just… to build it myself. End goal is to make a website or app of some sorts to make it really easy.

A lot of research was required to start this one off. I had to do some research into .inf files (these help download .cur & .ani files into Windows systems) and .cape files (which are how Mousecape cursors are stored).

Now, the difference between .cur files and normal .png files is that .cur files store an additional value (a hotspot value, which tells at what exact point the cursor can click? That’s the best explanation I have right now). And to get this value, you need to parse through the binary file of a .cur file to specific bytes. Through those specific bytes (stored as these funny little things called little-endian numbers (?)) we get our x and y value of the hotspot. With this predetermined value set by the author of the cursorpack, I can now place that directly into the .cape value. Less hassle for the user!

With all of that out of the way, let me succinctly write what I have accomplished here:

• Wrote a Python script to get the values of the cursor hotspot from a .cur value, by taking the byte data and converting them into integers.
  
  Now, there was some struggle in getting .ani cursors (animated cursors!) to do the same thing (as you can see), and I haven’t exactly figured out what byte data things I need to do with that. (More research… I suppose :/) My next step tomorrow is to figure that out. Point is, that I got the .cur file to give me what I need. (I am quite aware of the rambling here, it is late and I will edit this log tomorrow.)