gEDA-user: Thanks a million, and few small questions for a new user

[DJ Delorie]

> I can't figure out how to make it automatically place thermals when a 
> pin goes through a floodfill(polygon) of the same net.

PCB doesn't do this automatically, but if you wanted an easy project
to get involved in, adding it would be easy :-)

> I can't figure out how to make a second silkscreen layer (for the other 
> side) (The layer I created seems to route like copper.)

"Tab" to flip the board over.  There are two silk layers, but it
always draws to the one on "top".

> but it always says this even when I have a trace cutting across
> other traces and parts, and when I have installed thermals where
> they should not be.

Sample board?  You do have a netlist loaded, visible, and optimized,
yes?