decent way to access "private" data of widgets

[xander <xvw warande0147 warande uu nl>]

hi again,

sorry for flooding this mailing list with stupid questions, but you all
have been very helpful to me (THANKS).

my question: what's the right way to access for instance the width of a
widget? I can use gdk* functions or look deeper into the widget
struct. Can this value be retrieved more elegantly using
gtk_object_get_data?

--
A skunk sat on a stump and thunk the stump stunk,
but the stump thunk the skunk stunk.