progress bar stalls

[Brad Allen]

I'm using a progressbar to provide the user a sense the the script is 
progressing, but it's not as smooth as I would like, due to a lack of 
multithreading in the script. In fact, script execution (and 
therefore the progressbar) completely stops moving while waiting for 
certain commands to execute, such as DOS shell commands or do 
Applescript commands.

I tried using the "send" command to trigger delayed messages to my 
updateProgressMessage handler, but these delayed send messages were 
for some reason held up while the shell command was executing.

   --  send "updateProgressMessage " & quote & "Please wait. 
Generating report......" & quote & ",55" to this stack in 60 seconds

Any ideas on this? Thanks...