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From: swick@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ralph R. Swick)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: event-driven X11
Message-ID: <8906291418.AA02019@LYRE.MIT.EDU>
Date: 29 Jun 89 14:18:55 GMT
References: <5303@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: DEC/MIT Project Athena
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> Date: 23 Jun 89 15:56:22 GMT
> From: pie1.mach.cs.cmu.edu!egc@pt.cs.cmu.edu  (eddie caplan)

> with XToolkit i am even worse off.  i must call a never-returning XtMainLoop()
> which prevents me from using the XCheckIfEvent() solution.

No, there's no requirement that every application call XtMainLoop;
it's merely there as a convenience for those applications which
choose to be event-driven.  There's nothing at all preventing you
from learning in some way that there are X events in the queue,
fetching one of those events, and then giving it to Xt to process.
If your application also uses Xt timers or alternate inputs, then
you'll have to be careful to call XtAppProcessEvent occasionally to
get them processed, but it doesn't seem likely you'll be using
event-driven timers & input callbacks if you're writing an application
in some other style.

What I suspect you really need is an entire operating (system)
environment that gives real semantics for asynchronous i/o.
X already exists (happily) for such worlds. :-)