yet more packing questions

[Paul Barton-Davis <pbd op net>]

i have an even more complex packing question. i want something like
this:

+----------------------------------------------+
|       scrolled window containing             |	     
|       a vbox containing                      |	     
|       several hboxes each with               |	     
|       a pair of vboxes                       |
|                                              |
+- hbox #1 ----++------------------------------+
| left vbox #1 ||     right vbox #1            |
+--------------++------------------------------+
+- hbox #2 ----++------------------------------+
| left vbox #2 ||     right vbox #2            |
+--------------++------------------------------+
+-- hbox #3 ---++------------------------------+
| left vbox #3 ||     right vbox #3            |
+--------------++------------------------------+
+-- hbox #4 ---++------------------------------+
| left vbox #4 ||     right vbox #4            |
+--------------++------------------------------+
|  .....              ......                   |
+----------------------------------------------+	     
		<-     hscroll                ->	     
                <-     hruler                 ->	     
							     
the hard part is that the width of the hscroll and hruler should
precisely match the width of the right-hand vboxes within the hboxes in
the scrolled window.

i cannot see how to do this without fixing the sizes in stone, and
thats bad design. 

the only other idea i've had is to catch the allocation events in the
rh vboxes and use the value to set the size of scroll+ruler, but when
i thought of this, there seemed to be a problem of some kind. not sure
what it was.

any other clues ?

--p