Help > Authoring > Fundamental Tasks > Understanding the Edit Window > The Edit Window Components > The Cursor > The Cursor Type
The Cursor Type
There are three different cursor types in Arbortext Editor. You can set the cursor preference by navigating to Tools > Preferences. Choose the Window preferences category and set the Cursor Type.
• The I-beam cursor: This is an image of a red I-shaped cursor.
• The Block cursor: This is an image of black-filled vertical rectangle.
• The Line cursor: This is an image of red-filled vertical line.
To change the style of the cursor using a set command, you can also type one of the following commands at the Arbortext Editor command line to change the cursor:
• For the I-beam cursor:
set carettype=ibeam
• For the block cursor:
set carettype=block
• For the line cursor:
set carettype=line
To change the width of the cursor, you can choose set caretthickness from the Advanced preferences or type the command at the Arbortext Editor command line. Provide a whole number from 1 to 10. Higher numbers make the cursor wider. The default setting is 2.
set caretthickness=n
* 
When the block cursor is on top of a character, its width conforms to the width of that character. This is not true of the other two cursors; they maintain the default width or the width specified using set caretthickness even when they are over characters. At maximum width, the I-beam and line cursor can cover two characters at once, blocking your view of these characters.
The “invalid” cursor is a cursor with arrowheads on its top and bottom This is an image of a red arrow with two arrow heads, one pointing up and one pointing down.. When your cursor is in a place where you must insert an element before you can begin typing text, the arrowheads appear.
When you see the “invalid” cursor, you can find out the valid elements for the insertion point. Navigate Tools > Preferences and choose Edit preferences Be sure that Show Quick Tags on Enter is checked. Then return to your document and press ENTER. The Quick Tags menu appears listing valid elements for the cursor location. Choose an element. If the element is valid, it will be inserted. If they arrowhead cursor remains, try pressing ENTER again and selecting another element.
The “inactive” cursor is a gray triangle This is an image of a gray triangle.. Arbortext Editor displays this cursor when the window or pane containing the cursor is not active. For example, when the Document Map pane is active, the cursor displayed in the Edit pane is the inactive cursor. This cursor is also displayed when the Arbortext Editor window is not the active window on your screen.
When the macro recorder is recording steps, the cursor changes to the image of a cassette tape (The cursor shape while the macro recorder is running.).
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