skot

The settings in the inspector, eg "Font Size" on the message object... is there a way to change those programmatically?

programmatically-changing-the-inspector-settings-of-a-max-object

have a look at "common box attributes" in the documentation:

https://cycling74.com/docs/max5/refpages/max-ref/jbox.html

this is a way of changing font on umenus. I guess you want to create some kind of dynamic labeling .

Did you know that you can drag from an inspector name into a patcher, and it will make a message for you to set that parameter?

...and if you drag onto the object you want, it'll auto-connect!