3) Also after removing V_COMMAND and icon4 everywhere I could find, when I hover over the iconbar the icons all line up properly nicely but the inventory bag button is masked/greyed out, even though I have an inventory object. Clicking on it does nothing. Looking through the icon verb mask codes but not making sense of it yet...
Clearly some code expects 9 icons across the top, and assumes that at a certain index is the current inventory item (which will be greyed out)... but you removed icon4, so now it's the briefcase.
From looking at iconi.sc, it looks like if the signal property on the icon has $0004, then it will be disabled. Look at the disable method.
Also, looking in main.sc, there are places that assume things about the index of items in the icon bar. Look at the handsoff method. Actually, look at handsOn. It enables/disables icons in the icon bar based on their index. And if there's no "curInvIcon", then it disables the icon at position 5. So there's your answer.
I think the easiest thing for now is to keep a "blank" icon4 there, and ensure it's disable on handson, and also where the sq5IconBar is set up (currently it just disables index 5, you would add 4 here too). That will solve the right-click cycling issue too. Apparently right-click just cycles through enabled icons.