speeding up redraws

[<nuke bayside net>]

i'm looking into speeding up the redraws in gtk. i'm pretty sure most of
the time is spent loading the X server by clearing and redrawing entire
widgets when only part of them needs the draw. honestly, i don't know how
a toolkit can tell the difference. this kind of thing happens most
noticably on scrollbars, buttons (especially in testgtk- try opaque moving
a window over those buttons and watch them blink and redraw), and text
that is actually being modified but is on the same line as text that is
(selection, inserting).

any small pointers are appreciated.
 _        _  __     __             _ _                                  _
|        / |/ /_ __/ /_____         |       Nuke Skyjumper               |
|       /    / // /  '_/ -_)        |         "Master of the Farce"      |
|_     /_/|_/\_,_/_/\_\\__/        _|_           nuke@bayside.net       _|