Re: implementing a delayed "busy" cursor

[Paul Fox <pgf foxharp boston ma us>]

robert pearce wrote:
 > On Sun, 05 Aug 2007 14:02:22 -0400 you wrote:
 > > this will work.  if i set a gtk timeout for 1 second, but my
 > > program's "think" time is 10 seconds, then i won't get back to
 > > the event loop until after that, and i've therefore blown my
 > > intended timeout.
 > 
 > If your program is doing something that will take it 10 seconds, you
 > need to adjust your architecture to shift that operation out of the
 > loop. Either:
 > 
 >   - Split the big think into lots of little chunks
 >   - Let the GTK main loop get a shot in between them
 > 
 > or:
 > 
 >   - Move the complex thinky bit into another thread
 >   - Send a completion notification when it's done.
 > 
 > For the first method you should use g_idle_add to put the iteration of
 > chunks into free time. This leaves GTK running properly and doing your
 > hard stuff when there's nothing else to update.

okay -- i'll look into g_idle_add.  i'm somewhat limited in that i'm
only dealing with a thin shim of code between gtk underneath, and an
app that supports gtk/gtk+/qt/qt4 plus win32.  so major architecture
changes won't happen, at least not overnight.  :-)

but i think i understand the directions in which we need to move
(i.e., smaller chunks, more yields) to make this work.

thanks to all respondents.

paul
=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf foxharp boston ma us (arlington, ma, where it's 64.4 degrees)