>   but basically, when the user does something 
>   that I figure should warrant a refresh, 
>   then I call my refresh routine. 

i don't know if you've already got this figured out,
but for me what did the trick was learning the zen of
_not_ doing my redrawing until i got a _wndrefresh event.

plus, there's always the ever-useful "window fill"
which causes fb to update everything at that time.
it has no effect if nothing needs to be re-drawn.

-bowerbird