a battery conundrum...

So, I'm still mulling over all the numbers and options I have for powering my RV off of solar. The only part of the investment that is troubling me right now are the batteries. my constraint is that they need to be indoors, where they will be better regulated for temperature, but standard lead acid batteries are out due to the ventilation required. At first AGMs sounded like the way to go, but now I wonder if gel batteries are better. do any folks with experiance in the industry have any advice on weighing the benefits of these batteries, or other ideas entirely?

My other large source of unknown is in the wiring of my system. at first I thought it looked fairly simple, panel to junction box, j-box to inverter, inverter to charge controller, charge controller to battery bank. Now having read through some of the other options from the Backwoods systems, I wonder what other costs are going to be involved. for instance, do I need an additional battery charger if I have a charge controller? and If I plan to do my lights and fans off of DC and only use the inverter for AC on occasion, do I need a whole slew of other switches and boxes and fuses for switching back and forth? If I just set the system up to run my lights and fan on DC, should I still have a fuse box to set everything up in or just wire a fuse into the (+) wire in the socket? I may be grasping at too much at once here, and I apologize if its more than any one cares to respond to, I may have just been reading too much into this and need to step back and reevaluate.

but I appreciate any advice...
-sauce