Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!asente
From: asente@decwrl.dec.com (Paul Asente)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: XtMainLoop -vs- XtAppMainLoop
Message-ID: <997@bacchus.dec.com>
Date: 16 Dec 88 16:23:22 GMT
References: <8812151918.AA09798@intrepid.riacs.edu>
Organization: DEC Western Software Lab
Lines: 21

An application context holds all the state necessary to process one
"logical application".  Its principal element is a list of the displays
this application has open.  This list is used by XtAppMainLoop to see
which displays it should look at for input.

To start an application, you call XtToolkitInitialize to initialize the
toolkit, XtCreateApplicationContext to create an application context, and
XtAppCreateShell to create an application shell.

For backwards compatibility, and to make it easier to write simple
programs, there is a call XtInitialize that does all this for you and
creates a hidden, default application context.  This default application
context is used in XtMainLoop (and XtNextEvent, XtPending...).

So the long and short of it is, if you use XtInitialize, you should use
XtMainLoop.  If you create an application context explicitly using
XtCreateApplicationContext you should use XtAppMainLoop and pass your
application context in.

	-paul asente
	    asente@decwrl.dec.com	decwrl!asente