To those that are interested, here's the Facebuilder, half modernized to Cairo widgets. Backing imagery and proper icons to be done later. (I just pinched them off the renders for now)


It's usage now deceptively simple.
That drop list appears only when you mouse over an icon. But hovering over an icon allows the mousewheel to choose face parts, so does hovering over the drop list. Which also activates the relevant controls below.

It's super fast to use now, and to zip through, or to select face parts from a list. (Though render speed is slow to very poor when manipulating stacked layers of the face.)
Just a bit more to go to make it equivalent to the VB version.

Long story short. Not joking either.
Building in VB6 only takes a few hours or minutes. (Depending on what you are doing)
Building in Cairo takes days.
But, Cairo allows re-use of properly drawn items, so there is a partial time save. Not much, but sort of.

If Cairo widgets were place-able and configurable like VB, it would be a god send. At the moment, it feels like programming in HMTL.