Re: The cursor blinks again, but I can't tweak it

I've not forgotten you Tony and thanks for reporting it, but its not been 
easy.

I'd be grateful if you'd compile and test out this branch
https://github.com/dezza/vim/tree/fix-gtk3-cursor-redraw
I will not open a PR or draft yet, as this touches core loops in vim and is 
not something that should be rushed. I need some verification here.

The bug actually seems like a much older bug being revealed by the now more 
accurate (and faster) gtk3 redraw cycle.

Reproduction on unpatched upstream Vim is:

:set guicursor=a:blinkwait100-blinkon300-blinkoff300
:autocmd CursorHold * echo ''
:set updatetime=1000

There is one more step; press any key like "pgup" or "pgdn" after setting 
you will see the blinking stops, then resumes - right after it resumes the 
hiccup happens; exactly 1s (updatetime=1000) later.

The blink hiccup then occurs roughly once per second, and changing 
'updatetime' changes the interval. I avoided your prepend/append just to 
make debugging here easier.
The underlying problem seems that gui.c /^gui_wait_for_chars( stops and 
restarts blinking whenever the input loop returns, assuming that means 
actual user input occurred. 

CursorHold is thus cause of the hiccup as it wakes the input loop. So the 
existing guards were not proper, the blink timer was still cancelled and 
restarted even though the user remained idle.

Actually in hindsight, the cursor blinking transitions from 
stop/start/reset cycles have made perf on gtk3 worse in the past - 
especially during held keys like scrolling.

I looked briefly into if there was "workarounds" in other gui's, these are 
my findings:

GTK4: snapshot/hwaccel more likely to hide this symptom.
Win32: uses native win32 API (SetTimer(), KillTimer()) , most likely 
unaffected
Motif/X11,Photon/Haiku: seems identical in function.

I have a faint memory of also noting the blinking being inconsistent, this 
could very well be the cause all along.

I'll give u credit for being very attentive to the issue, thanks.

On Saturday, August 15, 2026 at 10:13:56 PM UTC+2 Tony Mechelynck wrote:

> My GTK3 version (and, among others, the version of packages
> "gtk3-devel" and "libgtk-3-0") is 3.4.52-2.2 — distributed by openSUSE
> Tumbleweed.
>
> Best regards,
> Tony.
>
> On Sat, Aug 15, 2026 at 11:20 AM Christoffer Aasted
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > I ask because I can't reproduce the longer on than off. I only notice 
> the rare hiccups/resets in timing.
> >
> > On Sat, Aug 15, 2026 at 10.40 Tony Mechelynck <[email protected]> 
> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Sat, Aug 15, 2026 at 5:05 AM Christoffer Aasted <[email protected]> 
> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > It should default to wayland. The wayland features in `:version` are 
> really for terminal clipboard like a small event loop for reading clipboard 
> for terminal. (confusing, I know)
> >> >
> >> > @Tony if you can provide a video that would be very helpful so we can 
> discuss it and I can compare.
> >>
> >> No I can't provide a video; but no matter which 'guicursor' setting I
> >> set, the cursor is on longer than off. Even if I do ":set gcr=<Tab>"
> >> to replace my blink settings manually with
> >> "a:blinkwait100-blinkon100-blinkoff500" which ought to set the cursor
> >> shortly on, then off for half a second, it is still on longer than
> >> off.
> >>
> >> Best regards,
> >> Tony.
> >>
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