On my notebook (OpenSuSE install) the following happens, if I place the 
"kicker" panel upright on the right side:

* "kicker" completely hogs 1 core (with ~4000 BogoMIPS) for around 150 seconds 
(yes 2:30!), just to layout and display the panel and react to interaction 
again
* the resulting layout is very far from optimal (to be polite)
* whenever I try to change any configuration option, either via 'kcontrol' or 
panel functions, a new "kicker" is spawned, incurring the 2:30 minutes 
paralysis penalty
* when trying to change the panel-clock configuration (hoping) to improve 
layout, the system after some minutes was driven into a trashing frenzy so 
bad, I had to physically switch of the machine (STRG+ALT+DEL or STRG+ALT+BS or 
switching to a VT were not possible anymore, terminal windows not reactive, 
even "top" was essentially frozen!)

To better understand your vision of Trinity -- what is your perception:

On one hand the code base is from KDE3 in the era of 4:3 displays -- placing 
the panel sideways was at least unusual -- I never tried, and don't know if 
this ever worked or was expected to work ...

On the other hand, in the era of 16:9 displays IMHO side panels are a 
desirable option ...

So, is the reported behavior
* a bug report?
* a request for improvement?
* a change request?
* to be expected and tolerated for such an uncouth non-traditional 
configuration (;-) ?

Best regards,

ThoMaus