scrolling and child widgets

[Robert Roebling <roebling ruf uni-freiburg de>]

  Hi,

I have a problem with GTK (any stable version) that is so involved,
that I send its descrition to this list, instead of the user list, 
please forgive if this is a sacrilege.

I need to be able to draw into a big scrollable window and this 
window also needs to have children (which also get scrolled).
Think of a HTML window that is quite large and has a few forms
in it. Also think of me as knowing GTK quite well.

When I use a normal GtkScrolledWindow and insert a normal window
(GtkFixed, for example, to contain the children) the size of the
window is limited to the size of an X window (as you certainly
know). Although X window are quite large, they aren't large enough
for my purpose. So I use the "reverse" way of scrolling, i.e. I don't
scroll the window, I scroll the window contents and I set the GC
exposure flag to true so as to get the correct expose events upon
scrolling. No problems with this so far.

But now I want to add subwindows (like HTML forms) to the window
and I'd like to just move the windows up and down (and sideways)
to reflect scrolling events and the GTK's widgets' X windows would
move and send the required expose events. As you may know, GTK
does not work this way (widgets sometimes don't have any windows,
or several of them) and all my attempts so far produce zillions
of unnecessary expose and draw events. Am I right that GTK's design
makes it unsuited for the approach I described, i.e. I have to move
the underlying X window? 

If so, how can I overcome the X window size limitation? 

  Robert