new to list: A few difficult questions

[ferret phonewave net]

Hello. I'm trying to get gnome set up on my X system, but I'm running into
several problems with it, issues which aren't even mentioned in the user's
guide or on the mailing list archives.

My system:

Currently an AMD K6/266, 256MB physical memory, home directory
NFS-mounted. I'm running Debian/GNU Linux (Woody) with XFree86 4.0.1 in a
dualhead configuration, and I'm running fvwm 2.3 (reasonably current
tarball) as my window manager. My display :0.0 is an ATI mach64-based card
that runs currently at 1280x1024x16bpp. Display :0.1 is an MGA Millenium
II that runs at 1600x1200x8bpp greyscale. Thus I cannot run X in Xinerama
mode due to hardware restrictions.

I am starting my X session from gdm and logging in using gnome-session.

Firstly, I cannot start any gnome panels on display :0.1. To test, I have
started from the console with 'startx' and .xsession, then run the panel
manually from xterms. Run this way, I can load two panels, but only if I
start them from xterms on each display. I have found that the '--display'
argument to panel does not appear to work. From an xterm on :0.0, if I
run 'panel --display :0.1', the panel will still start on :0.0.
Also, when run this way, both panels use the same 'default' configuration,
and I have not been able to alter this behaviour with any of the
documented commandline arguments.

Also, I have determined that when I run a panel on :0.1, if I bring up the
properties dialog for a panel applet (such as the pager or the task list)
the applet will segfault and will be removed from the panel configuration.

Secondly, there is no documented way to adjust only the menu panel's menu
font. I know this can be adjusted by changing the 'user font' in the
gnome/imlib configuration tool, but that changes the font all across the
panels; the task list and other panel menu font changes along with the
'menu panel's font.

Thirdly, I still see somewhat inconsistant keyboard handling behaviour
between gnome and gnome applications and other X applications in terms of
how they handle the 'bucky keys': alt, meta, super, hyper. Most X
applications I use that care about bucky bits appear to follow the ICCCM
reccomendation of checking the key's keysym and then the modifier bit
assigned to that keysym. Gnome, on the other hand, appears only to check
for the modifier bit. Thus, I have seen inconsistant keyboard handling on
the same terminal-based application depending on which terminal emulator I
use.

Fourthly, I would like to be able to have per-display user-interface
settings, such as defined colours and fonts. Also, any application that
supports having multiple manged windows open also needs to support opening
windows on displays other than the one it was started on. xemacs supports
a single process having windows open on multiple displays. I think it can
even handle opening windows on remote displays, but I currently have no
way to test for that. ;)


I suspect that issues first and second are in the user realm, and issues
third and fourth are in the developer realm. But all should first be
raised here for general discussion.