[cairo] masking in herds

[Donn]

Me again.
Right, nailed transform and rotate. Nailed alpha-ing. Time for masking. I have 
some fun code which I'll share soon.

class Box:
  def draw():
  <cairo commands to draw a box>

class Circle:
  def draw():
  <cairo draws a red circle>

Box.draw() results in a blue box.
Circle.draw() a red circle.

How can I wrap Box.draw() so that the circle is cropped by the box.

<cairo voodoo mask begin>
<cairo voodoo use Box.draw()>
Circle.draw()
OtherStuff.draw()
<cairo voodoo mask ends>

The problem is, I think, is that the mask command takes a ref to a cairo 
object *not* a complete set of <cairo commands>.
self.context.mask(self.radial): self.radial is the rub.
I have Box.draw() to offer and it includes stroke and fill etc. i.e. a 
completed drawing unit.

I can change the return value of the Box.draw() function to return an object 
that can go into mask() but it breaks the overall concept of my idea, which 
is: The children of an object are masked by the <cairo commands that draw 
stuff> of that object.
 Whatever goes into the object is masked by it's "shape". In the end a "Thing" 
may be many shapes (whatever it contains, let's say 2 squares and a 
dinosaur) - I want them *all* to act as one big mask should the thing be 
flagged as a mask. Thereafter whatever sub-things are drawn under this thing 
will be masked by a two-square-o-saur.

After writing that I sort of see the push_group thing in my immediate 
future :)

Hope that makes sense.

\d