Re: Proposal: asyncronous backends

[Joe Shaw <joe ximian com>]

On Fri, 2004-03-05 at 21:18 +0000, dave wrote:

> OK, I'll look into the locking thing. But I still think callbacks is a
> useful mechanism to have, because in some circumstances it's very useful
> for the backend to be able to refine its results.
> 
> For example, with the location display, we can display a location
> immediately, then update that display when we get some weather
> information from a web service - which is often around 10-20 seconds
> later. In this situation, just having separate threads isn't enough.
> 
> What do you think?

Yeah, I think that refining results is a good idea.

Your patch seems like a good first step.  I'd suggest creating a new
delegate type instead of GuiMatchNotifyDelegate.  They have the same
signature, but I don't think they should be equivalent callback types.

If you wanted to refine existing results, we'll probably need some sort
of unique ID for each result so that the engine match set can do the
right thing by removing the old ones and replacing them with the new
ones.

Joe