Widget sizing?

[The Devils Jester <thedevilsjester gmail com>]

In a nutshell I am (more or less) trying to simulate a vertical layout
manager using a GtkFixed layout manager. I have specific need to do this,
rather than just use the Gtk provided one.

The problem occurs when I have to resize a widget in the GtkFixed
container.  The function I am using for this is
gtk_widget_set_size_request.  The widget resizes (in this case it stretches
to fit the "container size"), but then the window can never be resized to
smaller than the widget size.   I can make the window larger (which makes
the container larger, which makes the widget larger) but I can never make
the window smaller because the size request holds it to a minimum size.

How can I resize the widget in a way that the window will ignore its size
when calculating the minimum window size?