Re: External event loop for glib?

[Kenneth Albanowski <kjahds kjahds com>]

On 28 Mar 1999, Owen Taylor wrote:

> There are a couple of reasons why that is not currently implemented:
> 
>  - Somebody has to be responsible for the main loop. The 
>    tradition in Unix (Xt, etc.) is that the toolkit handles
>    the main loop. So I concentrated on making GTK's main
>    loop as good as possible, and making it very easy to
>    integrate other things into it, rather than making it
>    easy to embed into other main loops.
> 
>  - GTK+'s main loop has a lot of functionality that you won't
>    find in just any main loop. In particular it is pretty
>    much 100% reentrant - you can make a recursive call
>    to g_main_run() anywhere.

Let me add on to Owen's comments by saying that we (or as least I) would
like to see the Gtk (GLib, really) main loop become the standard
"universal" main loop. So far everybody has rolled their own, and it makes
it nearly impossible to blend different systems together (witness the
current problems :-). If this means fixing all sorts of bugs, and
borrowing the neat features from every other main loop implementation,
then so be it.

Moreover, any comments leading towards a better main loop -- one that can
take over more resposibilities from other packages, or even one that can
easily be subsumed by or cooperate with other implementations -- would be
welcome.


-- 
Kenneth Albanowski (kjahds@kjahds.com, CIS: 70705,126)