the suggestion were based on one i sent to reactos development - about desktop icon direction orientation - normally you have it starting from the upper left edge, and going down to the right (just like ms-windows)

On MacOS (classic and X) you have from the upper right edge, going down to the left

On BeOS, you have from upper left edge, going right, to down

So i can imagine 8 possible icon arrangment combinations - the interesting would be if on Gnome you can choose one from all these 8 possible combination as easy

more: is it possible to adjust the icon distance on desktop (from edge and between icons)?

(i posted this request also at http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11026&highlight=)

Other information:
A screenshot of ReactOS (running into QEmu) using a similar preference window and config to do the desired result: 
http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/1029/reactossz7.png