problem vanished at some point, either on fresh installs or when i solved another problem that my UI was somewhat messed up, window titles gone, mouse cursor different, totally weird, problem was most likely something in the .cache dir of my user profile ... both points might be related or not ...
1.) - did gnumeric have 'ctrl+cursor' shortcuts to jump to the end of the current block of filled or empty cells and it's gone at some point in time?