Gnome panel: Lost icons after dist-upgrade

[Nick Croft <n@xjcs.org>]

Hi List

After 6 months of preoccupation with another project, I decided to do 
a dist-upgrade when a couple of packages started showing signs of their age.

All worked fine. It's nice to be up to date.

In my main user, where all the files and macros, aliases and habits reside, 
gnome-panel -- the top one -- no longer shows the icons, including the main
menu.

I can restore them by clicking on the panel's properties. If I request 'hide
buttons', suddenly the icons appear. In the users on this machine which I
don't normal use -- I have them for testing -- the set-up is just fine.

Any ideas? I'd appreciate your help. Of course I can keep clicking on
properties and requesting hide buttons, then cancelling, but the proecess 
lacks elegance.

Nick