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Retrocomputing

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    that way, the cursor has a high contrast regardless of the color of whatever's behind it obviously. Commented Mar 30, 2021 at 15:53
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    @OmarL that's certainly true, but I guess I lumped that into the "aesthetics" though that may not be totally correct. My own experience has been that contrast issues are so rare that I've never needed this style, but this could be subjective or context-dependent. Commented Mar 30, 2021 at 15:55
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    @OmalL On the original black-and-white Macintoshes, you often had surfaces (desktop background, etc.) made up of a single-pixel checkboard pattern, a halftone that passed for 50% gray. XOR cursors were actually very hard to see on those. Same thing for an actual gray surface (128,128,128) whose bitwise inverse is (127,127,127). Commented Mar 30, 2021 at 17:17
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    @StayOnTarget Well, keep in mind, not everyone's eyes are the same. The whole thing is much like driving with headlights on during daytime to increase visibility. Many argue that they already see the car - which is of course true ... except, it's false, as it's about noticing it faster and more reliable. An inverted cursor brings exactly that. Commented Mar 31, 2021 at 1:41
  • @Nimloth I remember mid-grey giving me huge trouble implementing inversion in something years ago (probably greyscale, possibly colour). The workaround took more code than the general case. Inversion with a border helped but then you can't do the XOR(XOR(pixel)) approach to remove the cursor. Commented Mar 31, 2021 at 10:25