title: Custom GTK widget to bypass GTK layout engine?
body: <p>I have an application layer that I'd like to port to Gtk that has all it's own layout code and I don't really want to spend 'n' months re-writing it to work with the Gtk layout system, but rather just using the existing internal layout code and have Gtk render the resulting widgets.</p>
  
  <p>I've started by writing my own widget after trying several of the built in containers. Basically I'm looking for something like the GtkFixed container that doesn't have a minimum size, i.e. Gtk will fit the first widget to the entire window, and all the child widgets will lay themselves out so that they fill the area. If I use GtkFixed for that, the window is always limited to the size of the initial layout, as that's the "requested" space. I can't resize it smaller than that using the edges of the window decor.</p>
  
  <p>Maybe I need schooling in allocation vs requesting. My googling so far hasn't found the information I need to make this work. I did try.</p>
  
  <p>I'm using the C API at the moment, and I'm targeting Win32 and Linux. So far I have a shell app working in Win32 that puts up an empty window. But the first child widget is limiting the resizing to it's initial size.</p>
  
  <p>Edit: FYI the end result of all this is available <a href="https://github.com/memecode/Lgi/blob/master/src/linux/Gtk/LgiWidget.cpp?ts=4" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>. That code represents the base widget that I can move and resize independent of GTKs layout engine.</p>