Efficiency question

[The Surprises <thesurprises1 attbi com>]

Greetings,

I am developing a gtk app that uses motion events to capture mouse
pointer location and continuously update a gtk label.  I have also
implemented routines to drag various gnome canvas items around a canvas.
I have found that calling the gtk_label_set_text routine to update the
label significantly degrades performance of the app.  There is a serious
lag during fast canvas item drag that disappears completely when I
comment out the gtk_label_set_text call.  Without this line, the items
drag completely smooth even at full screen zoom.  With the line, I get
smooth scrolling up to a certain app size, any larger causes slowdown.

The label, along with the canvas, is packed into a table.  My thinking
is that the label changing text is causing all the widgets within the
table to trigger a size_allocate or something.  The bigger the app, the
more expensive the size allocate.  I did notice that the label widget
changes size depending on the text size.  I played around with various
packing options (x expand, fill, etc, etc), but couldn't get any
improvement.  Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks,
Jason