Questions about GtkHButtonBox

[Werner Lehmann <wl bwl uni-kiel de>]

Hi,

(1) right away: is there a possibility that I can convince a GtkHButtonBox
to make its child buttons not all the same width? Or could I -- after
the buttons are created and added -- change (=reduce) their width? If
so how could I do this best taking into account that the font may be
different some time (so not to hardcode a width in pixels)?

The problem is I am using the HButtonBox to place dialog buttons for all
my dialogs at the right bottom corner and they should stay at the right
side if the dialog is widened. This is layout GTK_BUTTONBOX_END. I did
not find a way to simulate this without a hbuttonbox.

For example the buttons are for 'Clear History', 'Eval', 'Close'. The
first button makes the last two more than twice as wide as they need
to be, resulting in a somewhat ugly look. And the window must be wider than
it really needs to.

(2) How can I make a HButtonBox spread over the whole width of its parent?
I am offering a custom color as background for some widgets like GtkWindow
and GtkFrame. Overall this looks as I want it to. But not on a HButtonBox
which is inside a Vbox, being inside a NoteBook. The ButtonBox is only as
wide as the three buttons in it are together leaving some space on the left
side. That space is not colored which looks odd. I would rather not color 
the whole notebook. So how can I make the hbuttonbox spread over the whole
width?

Regards,
WL