thank you very much void main, you have an uncanny knack for posting answers, and i have yet, i think, to see you ever post a question!
i had buggered up my xfce earlier on today and decided to use KDE instead, but it looks like my buggerring up of xfce had also buggered up my Gtk, and i had to run xfce_setup to restore the system to its previous state, which i am happy to report solved the problem, as i am now posting this using phoenix 0.3!
thanks all for your help and input!
edit - void main's link contains both the problem and the solution! not bad, as i googled it and didn't see anything but people with the problem, and nobody soluting it! good work, void, i see you use search engines a lot!
[ October 30, 2002: Message edited by: Calum-21.2 ]