Newbie question: which widget are best to use for...

[Aline Baggio <aline prof inria fr>]

Hello,

I'm trying to make a small application using Gtk. I have a problem for
choosing which widgets to use.

My application is a graphical demo. It supposed to to display some
moving objects. I have objects, processes, hosts, pointers between
objects, etc.

You can imagine this demo as a large window that displays several
rooms, as well as some balls moving in the rooms. The balls can cross
walls if needed (i.e. processes boundaries). I can also have some
arrows or lines between objects from different rooms (pointers between
objects).

I first made some experiments with pixmaps to display the balls.  
It's OK, but I also need some widgets to display the rooms. It seems
that I can not use pixmaps: a ball need to overlap and hide some
part of a room. If I use boxes, I won't be able to draw arrows that
cross box boundaries.

So, must I use a specific widget for the rooms and then which one?
Or should I draw the rooms as rectangles and manage them by myself?

Then, what kind of widget must I use to get a drawable background
(drawable *only* by the demo "programmer", not by the demo user)?

Can I use curves for the lines and arrows?

Thanks in advance for your help.
Best regards,
                                                 Aline Baggio

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