want dash to be always-visible dock

[Adam Dingle <adam yorba org>]

I've been using GNOME Shell recently on Fedora 15.  Aesthetically it 
looks nice, and I like the full-screen application launcher with 
integrated search.  But I definitely want a dock which is always visible 
on the side of my screen (a la Docky, Plank, Avant Window Navigator and 
so on) and to use it as my primary means of managing open applications.  
So for the moment I'm running both GNOME Shell and Plank.  That works, 
but feels kludgy for a few reasons:

1. I see one dock (Plank) on my display at all times, but the GNOME 
Shell Activities view shows a second, independent dock (the dash).

2. Since I use Plank for window management, I don't often need the 
Expose view, so I really want the Activities button (and system key) to 
open the Applications view directly.

3. The window minimization effect zips toward the Activities button in 
the upper left, but I want it to zip downward toward the bottom of the 
display, where Plank is visible.

I'd like to know whether the GNOME Shell developers would accept patches 
toward either of the following goals:

1. A preference, command-line option or GSettings key which tells GNOME 
Shell to display the dash at the edge of the screen at all times.  This 
would allow me and others with similar inclinations to use the GNOME 
Shell dash instead of Docky or other docks.  In this mode, Activities 
would directly open Applications since the dash is used for window 
management.  Ideally the user could choose which edge of the screen the 
dash should be displayed on.  The dash would auto-hide when other 
windows overlap it (just like Docky and other docks).

and/or

2. A preference, command-line option or GSettings key which tells GNOME 
Shell to simply never display its dash, and that Activities should 
directly open Applications.  This would be convenient for users who want 
to use an external dock program.

If the answer is no on both counts, then I'll need to look at 
alternatives to GNOME Shell in its entirety.  It would be nice, however, 
if we could find some way to make GNOME Shell play nicely with 
always-visible desktop docks.

adam