.... yeah.... i think what happens is people learn fixed positioning in things like Tk place() or grid(),(or your Motif) and expect it to be there in more advanced toolkits.....like you said....it's really bad for resizing

...fwiw, you can control the exact position of a widget in a Gtk2 container, but you need to delve into the low-level Gdk window.... and then there are all sorts of refresh problems.... but see Gtk2 low-level icon for how it's basically done..... you could use an expose callback of sorts to get around refresh.....

....but generally the idea is to use the container packing they provide..... it's just a different way of looking at things..... but it works quite well..... after you construct 10 or 20 apps you get the hang of it :-)

..... in a fancy design where you want aligned buttons and widgets, the Gtk2::Table is the way to go.....just fill in empty table corners with wallpaper....i.e. empty labels or tiled images