Chinese and GNOME 2 (Mandrake)

[Jan <jandersen striva com>]

I'm not 100% sure which version of Gnome I use, I use mandrake 9.1, and I 
think it comes with ver2. I want to be able to use Chinese on the desktop, 
but it simply doesn't seem to work.

One thing is that the xcin seems to fail because it doesn't know the UTF8 
version of zh_CN - is there a way to change the language configuration that 
gets set up when I log in (I use gdm)?

Another thing is that eg. fire-/thunderbird send gibberish to the printer 
if I try to print a Chinese page. I can work around that by copying text to 
Openoffic.org, but that's a stupid and unsatifying way. Surely there must 
be a way to get it to work?

Finally a couple of other wuestions:

Is it possible to tell an application which desktop it should open on when 
it starts, just like you can set the geometry?

Is it possible to turn the size and position indicators on? I like to 
arrange my desktop applications so that they open up with my preferred 
geometry, and it is bloody stupid having to find out what those values are 
by trial and error.

And why do useful features have to disappear in every new version? Is this 
just because some primadonna doesn't like them (like eg. the position 
indicator), or is there a sensible explanation? I feel that Gnome becomes 
more and more just another MSWindows, and to be quite honest - MS are 
better at being MS. The reason to use Gnome - for me at least - is not that 
it's so much like 'Good Ole XP', but that it is not! And one of the things 
that has always distinguished X in a positive way is the fact that it is so 
much more configurable and controllable, if you want.

Apart from the fact that useful features are taken away from us, it also 
means that it becomes much less fun to use. Remember in the beginning - 
even MS-DOS and then Windows were a lot of fun in the days when there was a 
lot to fiddle with. Linux still has that, but it is quickly becoming less. 
My theory is that this is because especially the desktop has been taken 
over by people with the same mindset as MS - because that's when things 
start to be dumbed down so it 'looks cool' and all that BS.

/jan