Help with per user menu settings

[Jeremy White <jwhite codeweavers com>]

Hi all,

I'm hoping you can provide me with some pointers; I'm trying
to make sure our CrossOver products tie into Gnome 2.X
properly, and I'm having a heck of a time of it.

First, a bit of background.  We determined, empirically,
that Gnomee 2.0 had no way of creating per user menus
that integrated into the main system menu.  That is,
we found we had to copy, say, /etc/X11/desktop-menus/application.menus
in its entirety to ~/.gnome2/vfolders and edit it there.
This is an awful kludge of the worst kind.

I was pleased to discover that in Gnome 2.2.2, I can
create a ~/.gnome2/vfolders/applications.vfolder-info
with a single menu entry in it, and it will integrate nicely
into the Gnome menus.

So, in CrossOver, at run time/install time, we would like
to detect that we are running in the 'good' Gnome,
and Do the Right Thing (TM).  

So here are the questions:
  1.  Does anyone know when Gnome starting doing this
      the right way?  It seems as though 2.2.0.2 
      still fails, but I'd like to be sure.

      Even if someone could point me to the relevant
      code, it would help enormously.  I can read
      a cvs log with the best of 'em...

  2.  One bug remains, afaict - when I drop 
      ~/.gnome2/vfolders/applications.vfolder-info
      in place, it doesn't take effect until Gnome
      is restarted.  Is there any way for me to
      kick the panel in the head and force it to 
      reread this?

Feel free to jump in with other answers
(even 'you idiot, you should be doing all this
*this* way' would be very welcome).

Thanks,

Jeremy