spaces between characters in the gnome "insert characters" panel

["nick humphrey" <nick c humphrey gmail com>]

i made a new panel in gnome and added the "insert characters" panel.
then i added my own list of characters, the arabic alphabet with
punctuation marks: fatHa, kasra, damma, etc...
but in between the punctuation marks on the gnome panel there are
empty spaces buttons even though in the string i pasted into my
personalized character set, there were no spaces...

plus another thing, when i press on any of the buttons in the panel,
none of the letters get inserted anywhere (openoffice, firefox form
fields, gedit, etc).

any ideas?
Thanks. i love gnome =)

Nick