GtkAlignment makes things smaller, but surrouning don't get bigger

[Ben Johnson <ben blarg net>]

Hi.

I have a hard time getting widgets to take up as much of the screen as I
want them to.  Is there a trick to getting widgets to take up more
space?  I set the expand and fill properties on everything because I
want all available space to be consumed.  Inevitably I wind up with some
widgets looking too big while others are too small.  It seems reasonable
to think that forcing the too big widgets to shrink with a GtkAlignment
object would result in the other too small widgets to expand.  No luck.
I wind up with two blocks of widgets with lots of space between them.
How to make the widgets that I too small take up the available space?

Thanks,

- Ben