script or program to add an icon to the Gnome panel?

["Stowell Davison" <Stowell Davison noaa gov>]

I need to write a script or a program that will install an
icon on the Gnome panel.  At first I thought I could do that
by editing ~/.gnome/panel.d/default/Applet_Config.  But
that doesn't quite work -- sometimes my icon appears and
other times not only does it fail to appear but icons that
were previously on the panel vanish.

There's a promising-looking program example at
http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/gnome-core/panel/APPLET_WRITING
but I can't figure out the right include paths, etc. to get it to
build.

Can anyone direct me to documentation for:
1)  the format of the Applet_Config file;
2)  the format of the *.desktop files;
3)  the build environment for Gnome source code and
     examples?

Thanks for any help.

Stowe Davison

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