Setting Gnome appearance preferences from a script

[James Michael Fultz]

* Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> [2009-11-23 17:13 +0000]:
> Is there a way to increase the size of the mouse pointer in GNOME from
> within a script? (I know this also means choosing a cursor theme -
> AFAICS, the "default pointer" cannot be resized.)
> 
> In other words, the same as using the GUI to do:
> System | Preferences | Appearance | (pick a theme) | Customise |
> (click Pointer tab) | (select a resizable theme, e.g. DMZ White) |
> (Slide the "size" control to the far right, the largest size)
> 
> I'd also like to turn down the mouse sensitivity, too.
> 
> I'm writing a script to configure Ubuntu-based boxes for use older
> people and fine mouse control takes time to master - as does spotting
> the pointer itself!

After some searching and experimentation, I found the appropriate GConf
keys which can be manipulated via gconftool-2.

<http://www.gnome.org/~bmsmith/gconf-docs/C/gnome.html>

gconftool-2 --set --type=string \
        /desktop/gnome/peripherals/mouse/cursor_theme DMZ-White
gconftool-2 --set --type=int \
        /desktop/gnome/peripherals/mouse/cursor_size 48