I found:
1. https://mate-desktop.org/
-- no mention of user oriented documentation
2. https://wiki.mate-desktop.org/
Titled "Welcome to the documentation"
Under the heading "Good Documentation" it explicitly says:
> Every application comes with its own help dialogue. Furthermore
> there are lots of online tutorials.
But Where????????
I need to know how icons are placed on the default screen which displays
the contents of "/home/richard/.config/Desktop".
Placement is where ever cursor happens to to be.
How can I get them into nice even rows and columns.