Setting Gnome appearance preferences from a script

[Liam Proven]

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 5:43 PM, James Michael Fultz <croooow at gmail.com> wrote:
> * 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

Oh, wonderful - thanks!

Never encountered gconftool-2 before and the whole GNOME registry
thing is still a little alarming... :)


-- 
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