Getting correct widget height/width

[Ian King <king eiffel com>]

Is there a way of 'always' returning the correct height/width of a
widget whether or not it has been expanded in its parent or is
mapped/unmapped.

At the moment I am putting a split area in to a window (min size
400*400) and I would expect the width and height of the split area to be
400*400 also,   at the moment the height of the split area is 208 (100 +
100 + 8 = item 1 + item 2 + splitter heights).  I am using the maximum
of the combination of the widget's allocation and requisition, what am I
doing wrong?

Thanks for your time

Ian King