Hi, To answer your questions first: 1) updating the GUI with the 2 lines of code you indicated is correct. 2) you say, though, that the exit button is still not responsive; was this with a single-threaded or multi-threaded version? if it was single-threaded, then the reason is because there is only one gtk_main () and it can only do one thing at time. If you do work in the background in a single thread, there's no possibility for the user to interact with it, it's busy. Converting this to multi-threaded to achieve what you want is the way to go: 1) You can avoid the types of crashes you spoke of in a multi- threaded gui by sticking to the following guidelines: 1.1) do no gtk_...() calls in your background/server thread, it should be responsible only for the background processing you require. 1.2) do all gtk_...() calls within the single thread where gtk_main() has been invoked. 1.3) when any background thread needs to communicate with the user (i.e., the GUI), make a call to gtk_idle_add() specifying a function responsible for communicating the background thread's info back to the GUI for display. gtk_idle_add() is threadable without problems and will place the function to be called onto the mainloop queue for next processing. 2) using pthread vs. glib's implementation: I use glib's version, but miss one function, it seems there is no glib equivalent to pthread_kill(), and sometimes you might need it. but there are ways around it, in any case. i have no strong opinion here, perhaps someone else can provide more information. other than that you should be fine. richard On Jan 24, 2007, at 3:27 PM, Melvin Newman wrote: > First off I am a noob with GTK+. > > Basically I am writing a program that is to interface with a server > program over a network. As such this client program has effectively > 2 parts, 1) the backend code that connects to the server and > handles all the data communications, 2) the front end GUI that > presents the code to the user. > > The problem that I am running into is that I cant get the gui to > update in a timely manner (a problem that allot of us GTK noobs > seem to have, but one which no one answers clearly). I have tried > the following at key places in my code: > > while(gtk_events_pending()) > gtk_main_iteration(); > > And while this does update the gui, the user still has no control > over it. For example if the user select file->exit, the menu drops > down but the exit button has no effect. Can GTK+ run multiple > signal handlers concurrently? > > In my first write of this program I used pthreads however I did it > in a very very unsafe manner and the client program would > frequently crash because both gtk_main() and my thread where doing > gui operations. > > My main question therefore is, how do I write a responsive gui that > can communicate in real time over the backend networking code? Is > pthread the way to go? If so, how do I guarantee that the pthread > code will work on a single processor/core machine? My last pthread > code ran ok on my dual proc desktop, but died on my single proc > laptop. > > Thank you very much for any help you can provide this noob. > > Sincerely > Melvin > _______________________________________________ > gtk-list mailing list > gtk-list@xxxxxxxxx > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-list _______________________________________________ gtk-list mailing list gtk-list@xxxxxxxxx http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-list
