Need to interrupt to check for mouse movement

[Jp Calderone]

On Thu, 21 Jul 2005 00:18:58 -0400, Christopher Subich <spam.csubich+block at block.subich.spam.com> wrote:
>Peter Hansen wrote:
>> stringy wrote:
>>
>>> I have a program that shows a 3d representation of a cell, depending on
>>> some data that it receives from some C++. It runs with wx.timer(500),
>>> and on wx.EVT_TIMER, it updates the the data, and receives it over the
>>> socket.
>>
>>
>> It's generally inappropriate to have a GUI program do network
>> communications in the main GUI thread.  You should create a worker
>> thread and communicate with it using Queues and possibly the
>> AddPendingEvent() or PostEvent() methods in wx.  There should be many
>> easily accessible examples of how to do such things.  Post again if you
>> need help finding them.
>
>I'd argue that point; it's certainly inappropriate to do
>(long-)/blocking/ network communications in a main GUI thread, but
>that's just the same as any blocking IO.  If the main thread is blocked
>on IO, it can't respond to the user which is Bad.
>
>However, instead of building threads (possibly needlessly) and dealing
>with synchronization issues, I'd argue that the solution is to use a
>nonblocking network IO package that integrates with the GUI event loop.
>  Something like Twisted is perfect for this task, although it might
>involve a significant application restructuring for the grandparent poster.
>
>Since blocking network IO is generally slow, this should help the
>grandparent poster -- I am presuming that "the program updating itself"
>is an IO-bound, rather than processor-bound process.

In the particular case of wxWidgets, it turns out that the *GUI* blocks for long periods of time, preventing the *network* from getting attention.  But I agree with your position for other toolkits, such as Gtk, Qt, or Tk.

Jp