Ok, thru the miracle of 'just commenting #%!＠ out until it works', I've narrowed down why the redisplay was acting so oddly. it seems that when handle_focus_event_1() is called, it calls emacs_handle_focus_change_preliminary (in event-stream.c). This is what is causing the problems. The call to emacs_handle_focus_change_final doesn't make a bit of difference though. Curiouser and curiouser. But with that commented out I now have a gtk-xemacs that I'd be comfortable developing the rest of it in. That's something at least. :) -bp