RE: Temporarily disabling mouse avoidance mode automatically

[Drew Adams]

> > But you made me think. It would be nice if Emacs could 
> > (optionally) do what some apps do: Hide the mouse pointer
> > completely, until you move the mouse. That way, the pointer
> > would not simply be moved away when
> > you use mainly the keyboard; it would disappear altogether. 
> > You would be able to have an on-demand mouse.
> >
> > That would be a good mode value to add to 
> > `mouse-avoidance-mode': `vanish'.
> 
> I'd *love* to have something like that!  Now that I think of 
> it, I never use the mouse in emacs.  It often proves a distraction
> by inadvertently highlighting previous shell inputs or sitting
> atop something that vomits up a tooltip (or the tooltip's quieter
> but still annoying companion, flashing echo area text).
> 
> VLC media player automatically hides the cursor a moment after it
> stops moving.
>
> bw, eagerly awaiting Drew's rat poison

Sorry, I don't poison rats (having had a pet rat as a boy). ;-)

FWIW, I've suggested this to emacs-devel@gnu.org as a possible feature (after
the release) - thread "invisible mouse pointer?". Two people replied that they
have C patches to Emacs that implement this. So maybe something will come of it
eventually.

I do use a mouse, myself, so I don't really care one way or the other. But if
you're interested, you might follow up with emacs-devel. If you build Emacs
yourself, you might even try the C patches proposed, to have the feature for
yourself right away.