Pending messages

[Troy Rollins]

On Jun 18, 2004, at 2:48 AM, Ken Ray wrote:
> Troy, can you give us an example of the kind of apps you're working on 
> where
> time is the primary event? Just curious...

Sure... applications which continually monitor, report and manage the 
state(s) of external hardware through socket and/or serial connections.

My current application talks to an entire rack of professional video 
equipment, and manages pretty much everything about it. In this case, 
time is the _only_ event which exists, as many devices of this nature 
will "answer" when asked something, but otherwise don't say anything at 
all. So I have to ask them... a lot. Once they answer, I have to set up 
a new time interval for when they will next be asked... and of course, 
in the event that they don't answer, I have to have a time interval 
keeping track of _that_ and cause the system to resend the inquiry.

In Dar's terms (nice Primer, BTW Dar) the entire application is driven 
by "Message Mechanics" but also has pretty extensive user interaction 
functionality. This adds up to requiring very careful management of 
pending messages.
--
Troy
RPSystems, Ltd.
http://www.rpsystems.net