Threads and GUI

["ccf::satchell"@hermes.dra.hmg.gb]

After some messing about, I now have an Xt based GUI (using LessTif)
working nicely in a threaded application. To do this I have slightly 
hacked NextEvent.c from the Xt library, by replacing the call to select
(in IoWait) with a call to scm_internal_select. This raises as many questions  
as it solves. I have also modified xscm to make sure my hacked routines
are used. The whole shooting match works as loadable code in stock guile
interpreter. The SciPlot widget (for neat scientific graphs) is now
supported.

1) To compile it, I have just copied the cflags etc that Imake used.
This is clearly not portable, but how do I combine one file that
needs Imake into a configure/automake/libtool environment?

2) I have got rid of most the scheme support code from xscm by hard coding
it into the c files. This speeds loading up enormously. Some of the optional 
stuff is left as scheme and is accessed by the slib require mechanism. This 
worked up to a few weeks ago but is now broken. Could this be due to the 
change to a "user" module? Do people reccommend I recode the scheme support 
as modules?

3) I hate to think what the copyright situation is. The X consortium 
license is very forgiving, (basically  you just have to keep the copyright
notices), so we may not have a problem. Getting my employers permission to
publish is another matter.

4) I would like an idea for a simple but useful demo of threads
co-existing with a GUI. My own application is very specific; does 
anybody have any suggestions?

Julian Satchell 
<satchell@dera.gov.uk>