yet another node $links question

Well i have look around and it seems that i can not sort this out.

I have some modules that add links to my node (views bookmarks, forward, workflow-ng etc)
I am using a custom node-custom.tpl.php where i would like to print my links
Solution 1.
print $links;
ofc this doesn't look very nide and its not very flexible.
How can i print each one of those links seperatly?

In addition if i want to print one of the links in the top of the node and at the end use print $links; to print the rest, the firsst one will be printed again. So the only solution it seems to be print links one by one OR all togeter?
For some modules i have found the code to print the link separetly for other i havent.
Is there a standard way to print each link? for example something like print $links[0];

and to finish...how do i replace the links with an image?
I have see some css solutions but none seems to work for me. whats is the way to theme the link?

Any tip or point to a reading guide (that i can understand) is appreciated.

Thank you very much.