Updating progress bar-threading related problem

[vijayasarathy setsindia net]

Dear All,

I have raised this issue before, but havent been able to use them to make
a solution myself, and so I am floating it again:

I am developing a GTK interface for my program with the glade development
environment. I am looking for the following:

I have a main window, which calls another window on certain conditions.
This second window contains a progress bar, and a button OK. On clicking
the button[callback], the program calls a heavy weight function(which is
part of DLL that I have written in C) which takes a bulk amount of time
(close to 9 hours)to run certain processes and give results. In the
meanwhile, I want the status of this bulky function to be displayed in the
progress bar. I cant use functions or return value for retrieving the
fraction(in float) of the function that has been completed[amount of work
completed in the bulky function]. So in the bulky function, I write the
fraction of work done into a file, which, I want the GTK program to access
periodically for updating its progress bar.

I have already given a try with the following approach:

I initialised a boolean flag in main() which determines when I can start
updating progress bar. In the callback function of the OK button, I set
this value before calling the builk function, and also start a thread
function which checks values of flag, and accordingly update progress bar
by reading its value from file on which the bulky function is writing the
fraction into.

I cant give this code now[because I dont have it with me], could anyone
please guide me on how to get this done.

Thanks in advance,

Vijay

SORRY ABOUT THE SIGNATURE, THE FIREWALL DOES IT AUTOMATICALLY TO ANY
OUTGOING MAIL.

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