Emacs Tip #22: blink-cursor-mode

I couldn't care less about whether or not the cursor blinks. (note proper use of that phrase, rare in this culture)

However, some people really like it, need it, and some people don't like it at all. A recent thread in comp.emacs brought this to light.

So, if you'd like your cursor to blink (or not), add the line:

   (blink-cursor-mode 1)      ;; or pass in -1 to turn it off

to your .emacs. By default the cursor will blink.

You can also have the cursor stretch to cover the full width of the glyph (character) under it. e.g. it'd be as wide as the tab character (should there be one in your buffer):

   (setq x-stretch-cursor t)

For more documentation on cursor display, read the manual.