Very confused with pixbufs, pixmaps, images, rgbs and drawables

[Chris Seaton <chris chrisseaton com>]

I want to be pragmatically creating some off screen images, just some 
text rendering. I'm not using Gtk+ for this part of the application.
I have a vague idea I want to create either a GdkPixmap or a GdkImage, 
do my rendering using the base GdkDrawable, and then call 
gdk_pixbuf_get_from_drawable to convert to a GdkPixbuf to access 
individual pixels. How do I choose between GdkImage and GdkPixmap? Both 
of them are drawables (inherit from GdkDrawable).

The names are really really confusing. I know the difference between 
GdkPixmap and GdkPixbuf, but the names seem completely arbitary! If you 
switched the names you could still argue they made sense. How about 
GdkClientPixmap and GdkServerPixmap? GtkImage - that sounds like it 
should be the base class of all image classes, but it's something else 
entirely! And then there's GdkRGB!

GdkPixmap - server side pixel map
GdkBitmap - server side pixel map, 1bpp
GdkPixbuf - client side pixel map
GdkImage - not really sure, but it says it's redundant to GdkRGB
GdkRGB - seems to render raw pixel data from a simple pointer

Is that right? Please set me straight. What are they all for? And which 
do I want to solve my problem in the first paragraph?

Chris Seaton