Re: Still confused on new thread starting idle functions to update UI.

[Chris Angelico <rosuav gmail com>]

On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 9:28 PM, Chris Vine <chris cvine freeserve co uk> wrote:
> Otherwise, have you considered perhaps using something like the python
> bindings for GTK+?  These have a binding for g_idle_add() and handle
> all the memory allocation for you.  I recommend using the
> gobject-introspection binding for GTK+-3 rather than the old pygtk for
> GTK+-2.  Python is another language which is worth learning.  There are
> also introspection bindings for javascript if you prefer that (although
> you won't be able to use threads in javascript - but that may be an
> advantage for you).

I second the recommendation for Python. And if you like the idea of a
high level language (in which strings are strings, not pointers to
blobs of memory that you have to deallocate later) and also like C's
syntax, check out Pike at http://pike.lysator.liu.se/ - an excellent
language, though an obscure one. Currently Pike has GTK2 bindings but
not GTK3 (they're a planned addition, someone just has to do the work,
I guess). You can do threads with either Python or Pike; but for
something like this, I'd be inclined to work asynchronously instead of
with threads. The main thread goes into a back-end loop that handles
everything through callbacks - when a GTK event comes in, code gets
called, and when something happens that creates a new line of
information, code gets called. Unless you actually expect to saturate
one CPU core and need threads so you can make use of a second CPU or
core, this will be ample, and your code will be far FAR easier to get
your head around. Eliminating the headaches of low-level memory
management makes your life enormously easier.

ChrisA