Delay in Displaying Dialog

[Marshall Lake <mlake mlake net>]

I'm encountering a problem in an application I'm working on which I don't 
understand.  It may be due to a misconception I have with GTK+ 
functionality.

The application has a main window which comes up with program execution. 
Further processing is driven by events initiated by the user selecting 
drop-down menu items from this main window.

In one menu item a dialog is displayed where the user selects certain 
criteria with which to proceed.  Upon completion of establishing the 
criteria the dialog is destroyed and a new dialog is created.  Within this 
new dialog are a couple of boxes and a couple of tables.  Within one of 
the tables is a non-editable text widget with a vertical scrollbar.

A gtk_widget_show_all() is issued for this new dialog once it's created, 
however the dialog is not displayed at this point.  Additionally, the 
first dialog has not yet disappeared from the display.

Immediately after creation of this new dialog, text begins to be sent on a 
somewhat streaming basis to the text widget.  After a few seconds the 
first dialog disappears and the secondary dialog appears.  However, the 
only widget within the secondary dialog which appears is the text widget. 
No other widgets appear.  The appropriate text begins appearing and 
scrolling within the text widget.  But missing are the first four or five 
lines of text which were (probably) sent to the text widget during the 
time it was not displayed.

After the text being sent to the text widget ends and process flow falls 
back into gtk_main() then all the other widgets within the secondary 
dialog appear including the first few lines of text which had been 
missing.

Can anyone give me an idea (or point me someplace) which will tell me 
what's going on?  Thanks.

--
Marshall Lake -- mlake mlake net -- http://mlake.net