thanks for the info, i am reluctant to push this issue further in case of wasting space and time, but i'll give it one last shot...
i have (believe it or not) read the pasted in rabidvwm docs and i've been unable to get my answer from it for these reasons

-i can't figure the subelement name to fill into the "...Bevel" construct (i'd imagine that VWNBevel would point to this overall border instead of the miniwindow subelement)

-maybe i'm wrong but it seems that since the original author used such a round about method of drawing a border (*Shortcut... to display a graphic of a border) that the rabidvwm module doesn't support such border drawing, especially since it's docs don't explictly refer to such a border