IconList and threads

[Jason Tackaberry <tack linux com>]

I am working on an app that needs to be able to generate thumbnails for
an iconlist in the background (in a separate thread).  The background
thread will need to load the image, scale it, and write it to disk if no
thumbnail exists, or just load the thumbnail directly if it does, and then
add it to the icon list with gnome_icon_list_append_imlib.

I see a few problems with this.  Firstly, I know I can't call
gnome_icon_list_append_imlib from a thread.  Even if the gnome icon list
is thread safe (is it?), I know Imlib isn't.  I really would like to
load the thumbnail into memory in a separate thread, so calling
gnome_icon_list_append in the main (UI) thread isn't practical.  What is
the best approach for this?  Any blocking in the UI is simply unacceptable.

Also, is there any reason the icon_list isn't using gdk_pixbuf, or is
this just something that hasn't been done yet?

Finally, is there a way to get the text caption for the icon centered?

Thanks much,
Jason.