John,

To get back to your original query
.....
none of us know of a way to change the initial position of the first
row/column in the grid.

Which is why I moved on to a posible method to get the effect anyway. And
although the moving and resizing works, another problem popped up as a
result of the resizing. Which is what I than tried to find a solution for
(possibly by telling the involved thingamagotchy to refresh itself) .

IIRR, you wanted to do this because the line/column was over a line or
similar feature in the wallpaper you wanted to use, and for some reason
you couldn't just alter the wallpaper image (zoom it, crop it, or add a
border to it).

If you have just 2...4 pixels between the leftmost point of an icon and its
accompanying text and the desktops left border, how much cropping do you
think I would need to do to get a border thats aynthing else than a straight
line just 1..2 pixels wide to fit there ? In other words, cropping isn't
the answer.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser