gtk2/docs/reference/gtk/other_software.sgml

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<refentry id="gtk-other-software">
<refmeta>
<refentrytitle>Mixing GTK+ with other software</refentrytitle>
<manvolnum>3</manvolnum>
<refmiscinfo>Mixing GTK+ with other software</refmiscinfo>
</refmeta>

<refnamediv>
<refname>Mixing GTK+ with other software</refname>
<refpurpose>
How to combine GTK+ with other code and event loops
</refpurpose>
</refnamediv>

<refsect1>
<title>Overview</title>

<para>
Often people want to use GTK+ in combination with another library or existing 
body of code that is not GTK+-aware. The general problem people encounter 
is that the control flow of the other code does not return to GTK+, so 
widgets do not repaint, mouse and keyboard events are ignored, and so forth.
</para>

<para>
This section describes some approaches to solving this problem. The most
suitable approach depends on the code that's involved, the platforms you're
targetting, and your own familiarity with each approach.
</para>

</refsect1>

<refsect1>
<title>Periodically yield to GTK+ main loop</title>

<para>
This is the simplest method, but requires you to modify the non-GTK+ code.
Say you have a function that does some kind of lengthy task:
<informalexample>
<programlisting>
  void
  do_lengthy_task (void)
  {
     int i;
     for (i = 0; i &lt; BIG_NUMBER; ++i)
       {
         do_small_part_of_task ();
       }
  }
</programlisting>
</informalexample>
You simply insert code into this function that processes pending main loop tasks, if any:
<informalexample>
<programlisting>
  void
  do_lengthy_task (void)
  {
     int i;
     for (i = 0; i &lt; BIG_NUMBER; ++i)
       {
         do_small_part_of_task ();

         /* allow main loop to process pending events; NULL 
          * means the default context. 
          */
         while (g_main_context_pending (NULL))
           g_main_context_iteration (NULL, FALSE);
       }
  }
</programlisting>
</informalexample>
</para>

<para>
The primary disadvantage of this approach is that you have to trade off UI
responsiveness and the performance of the task. That is, if
do_small_part_of_task() does very little of the task, you'll spend lots of CPU
time on <link
linkend="g-main-context-iteration">g_main_context_iteration()</link>. While if
do_small_part_of_task() does a lot of work, the GUI will seem noticeably
"chunky" to the user.
</para>

<para>
Another disadvantage to this approach is that you can't have more than one
lengthy task at the same time, unless you manually integrate them.
</para>

<para>
The big advantage of this approach is that it's simple and straightforward, and
works fine for simple applications such as tossing up a progress bar during the
lengthy task.
</para>

</refsect1>

<refsect1>
<title>Run the other code as a slave of the GTK+ main loop</title>

<para>
As a slightly cleaner solution, you can ask the main loop to run a small part of your 
task whenever it isn't busy &mdash; that is, when it's <firstterm>idle</firstterm>.
GLib provides a function <link linkend="g-idle-add">g_idle_add()</link> that's useful 
for this. An "idle handler" added with <link linkend="g-idle-add">g_idle_add()</link>
will be run continuously as long as it returns <literal>TRUE</literal>. However, 
the main loop gives higher priority to GUI-related tasks, so will run those instead
when appropriate.
</para>

<para>
Here's a simple example:
<informalexample>
<programlisting>
  gboolean
  my_idle_handler (gpointer user_data)
  {
    do_small_part_of_task ();
  
    if (task_complete)
      return FALSE; /* removes the idle handler */
    else
      return TRUE;  /* runs the idle handler again */
  }

  g_idle_add (my_idle_handler, NULL);
</programlisting>
</informalexample>
</para>

<para>
If your task involves reading data from the network, you should instead use
<link linkend="g-input-add">g_input_add()</link>; this will allow the 
main loop to sleep until data is available on a file descriptor, then 
wake up to read that data.
</para>

<para>
<link linkend="g-idle-add">g_idle_add()</link> returns a main loop source ID you can 
use to remove the idle handler with <link linkend="g-source-remove">g_source_remove()</link>.
This is useful for cancelling a task, for example. Another approach is to keep a flag 
variable and have the idle handler itself return <literal>FALSE</literal> when appropriate.
</para>

</refsect1>

<refsect1>
<title>Use multiple processes</title>

<para>
If you can't break a task into small chunks &mdash; the
"do_small_part_of_task()" function in the above examples &mdash; you'll have to
separate your program into two parts, by spawning a child thread or process.
A process does not share the same address space (variables and data) with its parent.
A thread does share the same address space, so a change made to a variable in 
one thread will be visible to other threads as well.
</para>

<para>
This manual can't go into full detail on processes, threads, and other UNIX
programming topics.  You may wish to get a book or two &mdash; two I'm familiar
with are Beginning Linux Programming (WROX Press) and Advanced Programming in
the UNIX Environment (by Richard Stevens.
</para>

<para>
Those books also cover the central issue you'll need to address in order to have
a multi-process application: how to communicate between the processes. The
simplest solution is to use pipes; <link
linkend="g-input-add">g_input_add()</link> in combination with <link
linkend="g-spawn-async-with-pipes">g_spawn_async_with_pipes()</link> should make
this reasonably convenient. There are other possibilities, of course, such as
sockets, shared memory, and X Window System client message events, depending on
your needs.
</para>

</refsect1>


<refsect1>
<title>Use multiple threads</title>

<para>

</para>

</refsect1>

<refsect1>
<title>Integrate the GTK+ main loop with another main loop</title>

<para>
</para>

</refsect1>


<refsect1>
<title>Things that won't work</title>

<para>
signals
</para>

</refsect1>


</refentry>