Let's say I am in workspace 1. How do I run something in workspace 2. Specifically, I want to open up an xterm or an aterm on workspace 2. I am using debian with xdm and icewm and tcsh if that matters. I have googled alot but could not find this. Are workspaces separate displays? How do i access them with the -display option? Please help

No the display variable is the same for each workspace. If you look at all the processes seperatly. In most cases there is an X server, a window manager, and a desktop. The display variable is set for each X server that runs. The window manager is there to help with positioning windows and drawing that nice border with the basic set of buttons. And then you got a desktop which usually has the option of giving you more then one workspace. I guess you have to find a way to tell the desktop on which workspace you want to place it. I don't know if there is a standard method to do that for each desktop, but you might want to read through the documentation of the desktop which you are using.

i got it to work by putting this in my ~/.icewm/winoptions file:

naim.workspace: 1

workspace 0 is 1 and workspace 1 is 2 apparently.
then blah blah -name naim -title naim &