Offscreen Surfaces

[Mindbender <mindbender lokigames com>]

Hi,

I'm having a problem using Gtk's drawing area widget.  I prepare the
widget
using the following calls.

    gtk_drawing_area_size( ... );
    gtk_box_pack_start( ... );
    gtk_widget_realize( drawing_area );
    gtk_widget_show( drawing_area );
    gtk_widget_show( box );

Then I would like to assign the actual drawable to another internal
variable....
this seems the only appropriate place to do this.

    drawable = drawing_area->window;

My problem is that the surface is NULL until some arbitrary point past
the 
gtk_widget_realize (or maybe gtk_widget show ).  Is there a way to force
Gtk
to obtain the surface immediately ( before the function returns )?