Drawing a GtkWidget to an offscreen bitmap

[Gaurav Jain <gaurav anywhere gmail com>]

Hi All,

I wish to know if it is possible to draw a GtkWidget directly to an
offscreen bitmap (without drawing it on the screen).  I need this so
that I can implement transparency in the widget (over it's background
on screen), by first creating a pixmap of the widget, and then
rendering that pixmap on the screen with a set level of transparency. 
(By the way, is there any direct way to implement transparency?).

Thanks,
-Gaurav