Gnome Panel and Gnome 2 migration in sarge; user problems

[Manuel Bilderbeek <manuel@msxnet.org>]

Hi all,

I'm running testing and update every couple of days.
For my desktop I use WindowMaker and the Gnome panel to launch apps and 
have some cool applets in (Gnome Tasklist, CPU/Mem Usage Applet, CPU 
Load Applet, a swallowed pload, Mail check applet, ASClock, Mixer 
Applet, etc). I really use these applets a lot!

Yesterday I noticed that a large number of Gnome packages were migrated 
to 2.2, and so was the Gnome panel. The first problem was that 'panel' 
didn't work anymore, but that was easily solved by changing my .xsession 
script to run 'gnome-panel' instaed.

Allright, all my Gnome 1 stuff was gone; not strange, since everyting is 
now in the ~/.gnome2 dir, it seemed. OK, not a big problem, I thought, 
I'll just put the same applets and launchers in the Gnome 2 panel. 
Several problems occurred:
- the Gnome terminal launcher that was in the predefined default top 
panel doesn't work: it pops up a message that it failed to launch...
- there was no way to change the panel type. I wanted a 'corner panel', 
but I couldn't change the panel type of the two edge panels. Easily 
solved: remove the panels and create new ones.
- Trying to populate the panel I found the following problems:
  - The equivalent to the tasklist doesn't work: it remains empty, 
although many windows are in the screen
  - THere are hardly any applets!
    There was no (good) equivalent for
    - the CPU/Mem usage applet
    - CPU Load Applet
    - ASClock, only a very simple textual clock, with unconfigurable 
background color
    - a Netload applet (like the swallowed pload), only textual ones
    - the Mixer applet
    - XMMS applet
  - There's no possibility to swallow apps

To get some more applets available, I tried to install some Gnome 2 
packages that were still in unstable and not in testing. This at least 
gave me some sort of CPU/Mem/Net/Swap applet, but it isn't just as good 
as the one I was used to... (that one was very clear and compact.)
Also, this gave me a mixer applet (which doesn't have a configurable 
color... again a grey thing in the nice purple panel...)

What is the problem? Are there very little applets available because no 
one is porting the old 1.4 applets to 2.x?

The result is that I have a very crappy Gnome panel now, while I used to 
have a very nice, almost fully working (there was some graphics 
corruption in it (since I applied a theme)) panel.... :-(

Is this going to be fixed?
Did I find bugs?
Is it a matter of time before new applets will be ported?
Or have I overlooked things?
What about a better way to migrate for the user?
What can you advise me?

(ARgh, I don't want to downgrade!!)

Thanks in advance for any response... and please Cc: to my personal mail 
address.

Best regards,

a quite frustrated

Manuel Bilderbeek