title: Speeding up GTK tree view
body: <p>I'm writing an application for the Maemo platform using pygtk and the rendering speed of the tree view seems to be a problem. Since the application is a media controller I'm using transition animations in the UI. These animations slide the controls into view when moving around the UI. The issue with the tree control is that it is slow. </p>
  
  <p>Just moving the widget around in the middle of the screen is not that slow but if the cells are being exposed the framerate really drops. What makes this more annoying is that if the only area that is being exposed is the title row with the row labels, the framerate remains under control.</p>
  
  <p>Judging by this I'm suspecting the GTK tree view is drawing the full cells again each time a single row of pixels is being exposed. Is there a way to somehow force GTK to draw the whole widget into some buffer even if parts of it are off screen and then use the buffer to draw the widget when animating?</p>
  
  <p>Also is there a difference between using Viewport and scrolling that up and using Layout panel and moving the widgets down? I'd have imagined Viewport is faster but I saw no real difference when I tried both versions.</p>
  
  <p>I understand this isn't necessarily what GTK has been created for. Other alternative I've tried is pygame but I'd prefer some higher level implementaion that has widget based event handling built in. Also pygtk has the benefit of running in Windows and a window so development is easier.</p>