Re: Event loop in a secondary thread? Nibless Cocoa?

FROM : Bruce Sherwood
DATE : Sun May 04 04:52:40 2008

I couldn't agree more. But the issue is that I'm NOT building an
application. I'm trying to build a Python module, to be imported
dynamically by a running Python program. Here the app is Python, which
processes a script (program) written by a user, which at some point
imports the Visual module.

The primary thread is Python, executing statements in the user's script.
Secondary threads are the GUI thread and an OpenGL rendering thread.

The way Visual works is that about 30 times per second a rendering
thread runs, with the Python thread blocked, and a 3D OpenGL scene is
rendered and handed to the graphics card to refresh the screen. Because
the rendering uses the current attributes of objects in the scene, and
the Python computational thread can continually update those attributes,
the effect is that the user can concentrate on the calculations, and a
real-time navigable 3D scene is created as a side effect of those
calculations.

I SO want not to invent some new wheel! But I need advice on how to use
existing wheels in the face of two seemingly forbidding challenges: How
to run the GUI in a secondary thread, and how to dispense with a nib
file (or be able to point to it in a non-standard, non-bundled location).

Bruce Sherwood

John C. Randolph wrote:
>
> On May 3, 2008, at 4:35 PM, Bruce Sherwood wrote:

>>  We very much want a native-mode version of Visual.

>
> If you want a native app, then don't fight the framework.  Rolling your
> own event system, and doing away with nib files is not a project for
> someone new to the platform, and once you have experience with Cocoa,
> you'll know better than to reinvent the wheel.
>
> -jcr