A question about threads

[Paolo Franzetti <paolo lambrate inaf it>]

Hi.

I would like to put in a GTK application a button which is
"connected" to a function that performs a very long computational
task which do not freezes the application.

In other word I would like to press the button and start the computation
that should work "in the background" while the main window and all the
other widgets continue to work.

I guess I should use "threads", and I have tried to do in many different
ways but my application always freezes.

Can anyone give me some hints or some piece of code that works?

Thank you very much,
Paolo