design advise needed/toolbar question

[Paul Pogonyshev <pogonyshev gmx net>]

Hello.

Suppose I have a number (like 8) of modes of operation for a program.  They
all work in similar fashion, so you could switch between them seemlessly.
Much like different tools in The GIMP.

However, I don't want to put a number of buttons in the toolbar for the
modes, partially because I don't have icons, partially because I think they
are not so important as to warrant 8 buttons plus a couple of separators.
So, I decided that a good alternative would have been something like a
combo box in the toolbar.

However, it seems that in the new (2.4 and up) toolbar API there is no
easy way to add a random widget to a toolbar (well, I could subclass
GtkToolItem, but...)

Any suggestions?  A different design might solve a problem as well as a
simple way of putting widgets in the toolbar...  Note also that my app has
to work with all GTK+ version from 2.0 onwards.

Paul