Maintaining Z-order of transparent rectangles

[Alex Pavloff <apavloff eason com>]

Hi folks:

Here is my dillema.  I need to set up some very specific screens in my
application.  I'm using a fixed container, and can set sizes and positions
of buttons and images, and all of that works great.

However, now I'm trying to put transparent rectangles, ellipses, and lines
into this same framework, and I'm running into some problems.  Filled
rectangles are not a problem -- I just use a drawingarea.  However, since
drawingareas aren't transparent (and from reading on this list, can't be
made so), they won't work for ellipses and lines and non-filled rectangles,
because any object that is set behind one of these objects is going to be
overdrawn.

So!  The obvious answer is to draw my shapes on the main window itself
before I do the rest of the widgets.  All widgets will be on top of shapes
-- not a problem.  Now, if the screen has to redraw a portion of itself (if
another window moves on top of my screen), how do I go about figure out
which shapes have to be redrawn?

Thanks!

Alex Pavloff - apavloff eason com
Eason Technology -- www.eason.com