Change Mouse/ Cursor appearance in ginput

Simple Question:

is it possible to Change the Cursor appearance in ginput ?

Explanation:

If you use the ginput command, you will get a Crosshair as Cursor.Is it possible to get something like a grapping hand or ..... If you open a new figure and look into the menu bar, u will find a Pointer,a magnifier and a hand. Can i get these Objects for ginput ?

Answer 1

[Adam]

As far as I know you cannot set pointer type for ginput.

http://www.mathworks.co.uk/matlabcentral/fileexchange/12770-myginput

might be useful to you. It is something we (the team I work in) downloaded a while back for use in place of ginput for pretty much the same reason as you. It allows you to specify pointer type.

It is a horribly named function but it does a good job.

You can use any pointer type that you can set on a fig. These can be found by just typing:

set( gcf, 'pointer' )

on any figure you have. Any option in there should be usable so far as I know and looking at the code as that is the property it sets with the pointer string you pass in.

[Max Müller]

Does this fcn has the Output: button ? Because i am using this kind of Code:

[x,y,button] = ginput(1)

Furthermore, I guess there is no way to rename this fcn. Hence you are an advanced programmer, i guess there is no possibility right?

[Adam]

[xVal, yVal, button] = myginput( 1, 'crosshair' );

is how I used it in one of our programs so it appears to git the same syntax. The help at the top of the file also confirms syntax is identical to ginput except for the final extra argument.

It is a fileexchange download so you can simply edit the file and rename it if you want, taking note of any license requirements it has. In this case there appears to be no license file with it at all so you can do whatever you want with it for your own usage.

Obviously you could also simply create a wrapper function with a name you prefer as e.g.

function [x,y,button] = myBetterName( args )

[x,y,button] = myginput( args );

where 'args' would obviously be replaced by whatever inputs it expects. Then you can just call your own named wrapper function.

[Sean de Wolski]

@Adam: Being covered by the BSD license explicitly allows you to modify and redistribute.

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AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
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Not having a license means... That's why we almost never pick non-BSD files for pick of the week.

Answer 2

[Sean de Wolski]

What are you trying to do?

I typically avoid ginput and would recommend using an impoint (Image Processing Tbx req'd) instead.

[Max Müller]

first: I am only an intern so my Supervisor has to download this, cause some how i cant.

second: thanks a lot for the help

third: I am trying to get the x and y Coordinates of a Plot with ginput in a while fcn, which is close when button > 1.

Answer 3

[Johannes Korsawe]

This can be done very easily:

1. Use a local copy of Mathworks' original function ginput.m which has precedence in your Matlab path.
2. Adapt this copy to take two arguments: "Number of ginput points" and "pointersymbol". Make sure that the pointersymbol is set to [] if nargin==1.
3. Add pointersymbol as a second argument to the call and definition of the local funtion setupFcn inside ginput.
4. use the following code iside the local function setupFcn before the setup of the "ginput"-pointer:

try
    %Setup custom pointer
    set(gcf, 'Pointer', pointerSymbol);
    %Define the following entities, s.t. the restoreFcn has something to delete
    initialState.CrossHair = createCrossHair(fig);
    initialState.MouseListener = createCrossHair(fig);
catch
    %Setup empty pointer
    ...
end

Done. You can call the by ginput(5) to show the Mathworks' intended pointer behavior or use e.g. ginput(5, 'crosshair') to prescribe a custom pointer as a a figure property.