TextArea Cursor/Caret Symbol — Change from Block (█) to Beam (▏)

[Humboldt-Penguin]

Hi, hope everyone is doing alright.

My Question — Can you can make the TextArea cursor/caret appear as a vertical beam (▏) or underline (_), as opposed to the default block character (█)?

Hacky solutions are okay (e.g. getting the cursor position and manually rendering the desired caret character). I'd also be willing to try a PR as well if someone can point to some ideas.

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Previous Attempts — I brute force guessed various properties for .text-area--cursor, but none of them were valid.

Searching the source code, the block character likely originates from src/textual/_border.py or src/textual/widgets/_rule.py, but I can't find the code that actually renders it to screen.

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Minimal Code — If you want to tinker:

from textual.app import App, ComposeResult
from textual.widgets import TextArea


class TextAreaExample(App):
    
    # CSS = """\
    # .text-area--cursor {
    #     /* If you want to try CSS */
    # }
    # """


    def compose(self) -> ComposeResult:
        default_text = 'This is a basic text editor.'
        text_area = TextArea(default_text)
        # Note: I don't think the `text_area` object has any attribute to define cursor symbol. 
        yield text_area


if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = TextAreaExample()
    app.run()

---

Diagnostics —

# Textual Diagnostics

## Versions

| Name    | Value  |
|---------|--------|
| Textual | 0.63.4 |
| Rich    | 13.7.1 |

## Python

| Name           | Value                                             |
|----------------|---------------------------------------------------|
| Version        | 3.12.3                                            |
| Implementation | CPython                                           |
| Compiler       | MSC v.1938 64 bit (AMD64)                         |
| Executable     | C:\Users\Eris\mambaforge\envs\textual1\python.exe |

## Operating System

| Name    | Value      |
|---------|------------|
| System  | Windows    |
| Release | 10         |
| Version | 10.0.19045 |

## Terminal

| Name                 | Value            |
|----------------------|------------------|
| Terminal Application | Windows Terminal |
| TERM                 | *Not set*        |
| COLORTERM            | *Not set*        |
| FORCE_COLOR          | *Not set*        |
| NO_COLOR             | *Not set*        |

## Rich Console options

| Name           | Value               |
|----------------|---------------------|
| size           | width=99, height=53 |
| legacy_windows | False               |
| min_width      | 1                   |
| max_width      | 99                  |
| is_terminal    | True                |
| encoding       | utf-8               |
| max_height     | 53                  |
| justify        | None                |
| overflow       | None                |
| no_wrap        | False               |
| highlight      | None                |
| markup         | None                |
| height         | None                |

For context, I'm working on a FOSS/self-hosted alternative to paid/proprietary apps like Workflowy/Dynalist in the "infinite outliner" niche.

Thank you for your time!

[davep]

Searching the source code, the block character likely originates from src/textual/_border.py or src/textual/widgets/_rule.py, but I can't find the code that actually renders it to screen.

The cursor for TextArea is handled by the source for TextArea, not sure how you got to those files from there.

The cursor isn't a character, it's a changing of the background colour of the cell the cursor is on. If the cursor was a character you wouldn't be able to see the character it was on.