Questions from new user

[Toralf Lund <toralf kscanners com>]

I am fairly new to GNOME, and have a few questions about the way things
work. Actually, some of them may probably be viewed as criticism of how
the panel is designed, but I hope nobody gets upset about this.

Anyhow, what I wanted to ask was:

  1. Is there a desktop pager application that runs in a separate
     window? I find that the pager applet is too small to be useful, or
     it makes the panel too large, depending on how you configure it.
     This question is clearly related to the next one...
  2. Why can't I use the pager to move windows between the desktops? Or
     can I? Is there an alternative pager where this is possible?
  3. It it possible to display the task buttons in a scrollable list or
     window rather than having them resized to fit in. The latter
     approach makes the whole task list rather useless when you, like
     me, have the habit of having at least 20 windows open at any given
     time. Of course, this habit is one of the reasons why I'm using
     Linux in the first place.
  4. Why can't I put the panel in the middle of the screen? Not that I
     want it there, it's just a matter of principle.
  5. Can anyone explain how gnome-linuxconf is supposed to work? In
     particular, what is meant to happen when you select an entry from
     the list of configuration tasks? - It looks like selecting a task
     that has been displayed already has no effect.
  6. Is there an application similar to SGI's iconbook/iconcatalog? I
     find this a lot more convenient to use than large, deeply nested
     menus. For those of you who don't know this application, here are
     some excerpts from its manual page:



               The iconcatalog (or iconbook) contains named pages which can store any
               type of icon, including files, folders, programs, printers, people,
               hosts, and tape and disk drives.

               Icons are stored in the catalog as references to the actual entities. If
               an icon is dragged onto an iconcatalog page, only a reference to the
               actual entity is kept on the page.

          [...]

               An iconcatalog page can be a system page or an user page or a combination
               of the two.

          [...]

               New blank pages can be created in the iconcatalog for storing user-chosen
               icons.  These new, user pages can be renamed, though the system's default
               pages (ex., Applications, Demos) can not be renamed.  The iconcatalog
               checks automatically to ensure that no two pages have the same name.

          [...]

               This application has the ``run-once'' feature, meaning only one instance
               of the application will run at one time.  Attempting to launch the
               application a second time will have the effect of deiconifying the
               application window or popping it to the top on the current desk.

     I should also add that iconbook is integrated with the desktop
     toolchest (the "launcher menus" on the SGI); a menu entry for
     opening each page in the book will be added automatically.
  7. Is there a way to simulate the opening of an icon from the command
     line, in the manner of SGI's "fileopen" command?
  8. How do I set up the file manager to request additional parameters
     from the user when an application is opened in certain ways? For
     instance, I sometimes want the user to be asked for a file name
     argument when he double clicked a particular icon rather than
     dropping a file on in.
  9. How do I select the keyboard "language"?

There's probably more I want to know, but this is all I can think  of at
the moment...

- Toralf Lund