You can customize your main panel and have only tools which you use most often. Then you can save it as your workspace(s), and use them later anytime you want.

Tools > Customize > Drag-and-Drop the commands you wish to have on your main panel.

Thanks for the response. I already have done what you've suggested and in fact have a pretty extensive workspace ... meaning, I probably have 40 tools/commands represented by various personally-created small icons on my toolbars/panels docked at the top of my window in two rows.

What I'm wondering is, if there's a way to prevent those toolbars/panels from being "undocked" and converted into floating boxes because I've reached for something at the top of the glyph window and clicked a centimeter or two above it. Every time I do that, my two toolbars either combine into one (hiding one, in effect), or the bottom toolbar is moved and becomes a square version inside the glyph window itself. It can be rather annoying.

You're using the mouse to select tools? I find it's much more efficient to use the keyboard shortcuts. Most of the tools have single keys assigned to them (1 for the select tool, 3 for knife tool, 5 for the corner tool, etc.). For the ones that don't, you can assign them yourself.