blocking gui process

[John Tapsell]

On 5 June 2010 00:41, Johannes Buchner <buchner.johannes at gmx.at> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I was wondering if it would be possible to architect GUIs so that their
> process can be blocked while the user doesn't interact with them.
> That would make it possible to swap the process out completely (e.g.
> while it is on a different workspace).
>
> In reality, a program will often have some background threads running.
> But still, I'd be interested.

For a given program, it should be possible to write it so that it does
not have background threads running if it's not doing anything.

But for all programs, there will be always one or two that are badly
written.  Perhaps you want to follow what the Google Android is doing
with suspend blockers.

The idea is that you want the system sleep even if processes are doing
something, because not all process are well written.  Thus you want to
be able to say "This processes really is doing something important,
and must not be suspended", for example network drivers etc.

>  -- somewhat unrelated musings follow --
> <snip>

Check out Qt 4.7 with its QML stuf:
http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.7-snapshot/qdeclarativeanimation.html

John