gnome2 repairs

[Haines Brown <brownh hartford-hwp com>]

I need an answer to a very general question.

When an application becomes corrupted, I can reinstall, I can recover
files from a backup, I can remove and regenerate its configuration, or
I can look at the configuration files and consider repairs on them.

I have a user account with a corrupted gnome configuration. If I want
to regenerate user's gnome2 configuration, which directories need to
be removed? Will a default configuration be regenerated when X is
restarted?

If instead I want to recover files from a backup, which of the
dectories need to be recovered? I have problems with applets, keyboard
and mouse behaviors.

For a repair beyond just fiddling with gconf, is there any source of
information on what the various gnome files do? Besides not knowing
what the files are, it seems difficult to edit XML files by hand. Does
this suggest that a repair is probably a waste of time and I should
instead just wipe out my configuration and build a new one?
 
Haines Brown