I'm trying to write a taskbar/panel for Linux (like fbpanel or pypanel) using GTK# and am a little hung up. I've created a Gtk.Window to act as the panel and positioned/resized it appropriately. I've also set its WindowTypeHint to Dock so that it remains on top of other windows. So far it 'looks' like a panel. However, if the panel is running and I maximize another window, that window fills the whole desktop - meaning the bottom portion of the window is covered up by my panel.

I've gathered that I probably need to change the desktop's workarea. How can I go about doing this in C#? (Preferably using GTK#, but I don't mind using interop if it's necessary.)

As a bit of a side point, I'm curious if anyone knows how I would go about 'informing' the window manager about where applications' taskbar buttons are. (For example, if the window manager wants to animate the minimize action so that the window shrinks down to its button on the taskbar, how do I let the window manager know where that button is on the taskbar?)