question on xpm manipulations

[Sri Ramkrishna <sri aracnet com>]

I'm trying to write an applet that simulates a readerboard.  But I'm
having a problem with the display.  What I would like is to do the same
thing that things like asclock does, be able to use xpm images of letters
and characters and put them into the display.  

I understand conceptually what needs to be done, you need to know how to
grab the coordinates from the image file you created from the xpm, and
then use those coordinates to grab each character.  But I don't understand
the GNOME API well enough to understand how it works.  There is no
documentation on any of the Image APIs on either gdev.net or the supplied
documentation.  I've been reading through the include/gdk/*.h files trying
to figure out. 

I am having trouble  understanding the syntax.  Looking at some of
the applets only lead to confusion as they aren't well documented either.
Can anybody point me to a good well commented program I can look at or
maybe just explain it to me?

Thanks!
sri

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sri Ramkrishna         /|\ Unix is very user friendly, its just very picky
email: sri@aracnet.com -|- on who it is friendly to. -- Unknown? 
phone: 503-356-1078    \|/ 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                        |