gtk design question (events vs signals)

["Jason Stokes" <jstok bluedog apana org au>]

I was hoping someone could settle a nagging question I have about the design 
of GTK+, specifically, the distinction between signals and events, which I 
find unclean.  Now, apparently, GTK+ inherits its event model from GDK which 
in turn inherits it from low level X toolkits like Xt Intrinsics via Xlib, but 
my question is: is there any technical reason for retaining this separation, 
including separate handling models and structs, apart from historical reasons 
and implementation convenience?  If GTK could have had the the benefit of a 
"clean" redesign from the ground up, would everything be a signal, or am I 
missing some reason why the two models are separate?  For example, should I 
think of events as "lower level" signals?

-- 
Jason Stokes: jstok@bluedog.apana.org.au