xfdesktop icon placement problem

[Allin Cottrell]

I'm having a curious problem with icon placement under xfdesktop. This 
is on Arch Linux, fully updated (so xfdesktop 4.12.0), though I've 
seen the same thing with earlier versions.

The problem: the placement zone for File/launcher icons overlaps with 
xfce panel space, so that some icons end up underneath panels, as 
illustrated in

http://users.wfu.edu/cottrell/xfdesktop/icon-overlap.png

which shows the top-left area of my desktop. The following two images 
show how the panels in question (a "deskbar" down the left and a 
horizontal panel to hold a notification area at the top) are 
configured:

http://users.wfu.edu/cottrell/xfdesktop/deskbar-prop.png
http://users.wfu.edu/cottrell/xfdesktop/panel3-prop.png

One more screenshot shows workspace configuration:
http://users.wfu.edu/cottrell/xfdesktop/workspace-prop.png

With xfdesktop 4.10.3 I was able to "fix" this via a simple hack to 
xfdesktop-icon-view.c, tweaking the "MARGIN" code as per 
http://users.wfu.edu/cottrell/xfdesktop/xfdesktop-icon-view.c.diff

In xfdesktop 4.12.0, however, the icon placement code is a lot more 
complicated and my attempts to update my patch have been unavailing so 
far.

(One more comment: I usually run sawfish as window manager but just in 
case the "foreign" WM was part of the problem I switched to xfwm4 for 
the session shown in the screenshots; so it seems sawfish was not the 
issue.)

Thanks for any help!

-- 
Allin Cottrell
Department of Economics
Wake Forest University, NC