LC7 and 8 - Non responsive processing large text files

[Richard Gaskin]

Mark Waddingham wrote:

> P.S. One could argue that 'multi-threading' might help here - but it is
> actually absolutely no different in effect from splitting into two
> processes. Indeed, for this kind of thing separate processes is a much
> much better idea as it completely insulates the master from the slave
> and is much more failsafe as the two processes run in their own memory
> spaces with their own resources and only communicate over a very thin
> connection. i.e. Problems in one cannot propagate to the other. It also
> provides more options in terms of running the indexing operation - it
> doesn't necessarily need to be done in response to the master
> application, indexing becomes an operation in its own right which can be
> managed in any way which might be required.

The more I learn about multiprocessing the less I'm interested in 
multithreading, for all the reasons you mentioned.

The only place I still crave threading doesn't even need to be exposed 
to us as such, but I believe would be VERY helpful: asynchronous 
playback of GIF animations.

Right now even LC's GIF-based progress indicators hiccup, since they're 
dependent on explicit slices of processing time given to it in between 
other actions.

If there was some quick solution for adding an option to play GIFs in a 
separate thread, so many UIs (including games) would be simpler and more 
satisfying to build.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
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