installing a panel applet without being root

[David Madore <david madore ens fr>]

Hi.  I hope this is the right mailing-list to ask that sort of
questions.

I'd like to write a Gnome panel applet to run on a computer on which I
am not root.  The tutorial on <URL:
http://www.gnome.org/projects/ORBit2/appletstutorial.html > instructs
me to put a .server file in /usr/lib/bonobo/servers/ - but obviously I
don't have write access to that directory.  I tried using
/usr/sbin/bonobo-activation-sysconf to add $HOME/.bonobo/servers to
the search path, but I don't have permission to edit
/etc/bonobo-activation/bonobo-activation-config.xml either; I've also
heard that the BONOBO_ACTIVATION_PATH environment variable can help
me, but I don't know for which process I should set it (the problem
being that I'm totally lost in the forest of Gnome processes, which
spawns which and so on, so I don't know how I could initialize that
variable).

So, what's the usual/recommended way to install Gnome panel applets
withtout being administrator?

Thanks in advance for any hints,

-- 
     David A. Madore
    (david madore ens fr,
     http://www.madore.org/~david/ )