Fontify: (No) Progress Bar

Hi all,

we are using XEmacs 21.4 (April 2001) here on both Linux and HP-UX
machines. We had to recompile it for some reason and are now facing
a problem during fontify:

Whenever fontification is done on a buffer, a progress bar appears
just above the mini buffer (see attached image). This bar is flashing
but not advancing.
If I hit Ctrl-C very often it does advance and even finally terminate and
the buffer is correctly fontified. Also if I switch to a different virtual desktop
with my desktop manager (KDE or MWM or fvwm2 are all the same for
this problem) and then come back to the desktop, where the XEmacs is,
the progress bar is gone and the buffer is fontified correctly.

My question is: As I guess that this is a complex problem with X-protocol
etc. involved which might never be solved really, I'd just like to get rid
of this progress bar (we prevent larger files from being fontified anyway).
Is it possible (through some setting in the init.el file or so) to tell XEmacs
not to show the progress bar during fontify? Or is this necessary during
compile?

Thanks so much for any help!
Regards,
Gerhard

(See attached file: progress.gif)