programatically changing pointer size

Thanks, I suspected indeed that some daemon somewhere had to be told to actually look at the new setting.

Applescript was totally useless and horribly complex (GUI scripting… ) but should have worked.

Anyway, I have solved it using Keyboard Maestro: activate System Settings, set its window large enough, then do mouse clicks at the right places, close System Settings. This will of course go wrong as soon as Apple once more changes the interface layout, but at least it works now. And it is also linked to a keystroke (I chose control-shift-option-command-uparrow, but that choice is irrelevant)

Of course I'm aware of the shaking bit, but it's not what I want.

When I give a presentation, I like the pointer to be large, so the audience can see at what I'm pointing (IFF I need to do so). Laser pointers are no good on modern very large LED displays in bright daylight.

Yes, not very often. My old scripts stopped working when I changed to Ventura (what did not stop working in Ventura?… ). But as said, Keyboard Maestro did the job. After having wasted a whole afternoon with GUI scripting.

So, all set for now.

I appreciate a dedicated account might work for many people, but it would be a terribly complex solution in my case.

That is because I gave up on proprietary document formats way back in 1994. I activated a web server on my machine. Instead of Word or Pages, I use HTML + CSS; instead of Illustrator or Inkscape I use SVG, and instead of Powerpoint or Keynote, I use Baratin, a trial-making program I wrote. Therefore, almost all my documents are maintained with web technologies. Admittedly, I never found a good alternative to a spreadsheet, but with a friend I'm working on something even better than Numbers and web+JavaScript based.

For presentations I keep all "slides" as independent topic pages in HTML. They adapt to any screen size and changing the "skin" is also easy (CSS!). The total of "slides" thus produced now stands at over 6'000. They are filed in a "repository", like an encyclopaedia, by subject matter. Thus, to make a presentation, I use my Baratin program to first select the language (many slides exist in English, Dutch and French), then select the slides I want to show, and finally order them in the sequence and tree-structure that I want. And most often I have to write a few new ones too. Baratin then produces a "trail", which is an HTML page with the links to the chosen pages in the repository, plus some links to shared CSS and JavaScript. The server then puts up a number of windows (pop-up blocking has to be switched off of course) which provide two views on the current slide, one on the next one, the one down in the tree, some controls, etc. One of the views on the current slide is shifted to the projector or other screen seen by the audience, the rest remains on my laptop screen, so I also never use mirroring, and my desktop is never on the audience view. The JavaScript uses clicks on control buttons or the arrow keys to walk the tree structure to show the slides (or skip branches of the tree, instantly go back to any chosen slide, and so on).

This setup allows me to re-use slides without making copies, to use them in any sequence, and even, if desired, to mix in other documents. If I spot an error, any correction I make is immediately reflected in all presentations that include that slide in their trail tree.

So I would have to put the whole system on that dedicated user account, and then I would still need to set the cursor to small when I'm working on it, and large during a presentation.

Now you are going to say that I might just share my Documents folder with that other account, and that is correct, but it would still mean a lot of twiddling (not to mention what needs to be done for the web server).

The solution I currently have is perfectly OK.

Thanks, that is interesting indeed. 123 lines of code to change the pointer size...

But admittedly, as usual, I'm a "special case". ;-)