I'd like to create a new text editor with some non-standard capabilities for the edit box where you would normally type your code (and do syntax highlighting). Since I'd like to have complete control over this I was thinking how should I proceed.. my target is primarily linux and I was thinking to use GTK+ as GUI toolkit. Since I'm a newbie I'm not sure how custom controls are drawn/rendered. Should I consider using openGL to draw a control from scratch? That doesn't sound right to be honest but I have no idea on how to do it.. The "nonstandard capabilities" would include drawing stuff on the control (shapes and boxes) at any position, being able to write into multiple areas.. all stuff you can't normally do with an edit box. Question: How should I create a GTK+ nonstandard GUI control like an edit box that has the following capabilities: edit text, select text, delete text, draw message boxes on top of it, draw images inside it (under and/or on top of the text), insert text into multiple places at the same time? Should I subclass an edit box control or should I "render" an entirely new one with openGL or such? I'm still in the design phase (I even need to identify the frameworks I should use) and I've taken a look at the Chromium project (GTK+). I haven't found anything that suited my problem