Hey, if you figure it out, post an example please. :-) From my testing, rects and ellipses with transparent centers will let the signal pass thru, but a transparent section of an image shows the image as the current item. If you look at the Goo demo, and move the toroid.png ( with a transparent center) over another item, then try to drag the item in the visible hole, the toroid moves. In the Gnome2::Canvas, the item in the hole will be detected and moved. Maybe the beta state of Goo still has this as a limitation? Maybe you could work around it by adjoining separate images, so they have a whole in them.... kind of clunky. :-)