Paul, The Timer.OnExecute I mentioned being run inside the loop excludes some of the functions that are normally executed by the timer, as these functions can not execute while we are waiting on the thread. The timer cannot be idle. It's not just updating the UI but doing some other important work that is necessary to continue.
I should probably mention that it's a media player with a VU meter that needs updating continuously and elapsed/remaining times etc. The other thread is doing the actual playing of the audio files. The wait needs to occur when sending a command to the thread to preload a track, or start playing, etc. On occasions, a procedure in the main app involves issuing several commands which need to occur sequentially, hence the need to wait until one command is complete. Normally this wait is less than 1 second, but it's still long enough at times to get a modal dialog opened within the ProcessMessages loop, and then this function hangs. It's been like this for years, but the occasional user comes across the problem and the media player stops, generally between tracks, when opening a modal dialog at the wrong moment. Preventing a modal window from opening while in this loop seems to be the only solution. The messages I was trying to avoid processing were mouse clicks and keyboard keys. Any other ideas how to resolve this? Cheers. -----Original Message----- From: delphi-boun...@delphi.org.nz [mailto:delphi-boun...@delphi.org.nz] On Behalf Of Paul Heinz Sent: Tuesday, 2 August 2011 4:04 p.m. To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List Subject: Re: [DUG] Why does this hang? Hi Ross > I can't remember now what problem I was having with > Application.ProcessMessages but this code fixed it while I > was testing, and had to find tune the message numbers. I > failed to comment the code. I think it had something to do > with other visible non-modal forms. > > I may have to re-instate ProcessMessages and see what the problem was. > > The wait loop is generally no more than 2 or 3 seconds > waiting for a thread command to finish, but I need the main > window to update continuously during this time. Hrmm.. I don't really understand the architecture of your app, but _usually_ threads are an attempt to NOT have to have blocking busy-wait loops in your main UI thrad. Could your worker thread not send a message (or use Thread.Synchronise which sends a message for you) to signal it's completion instead? In short, why can't you just return to the normal message loop? It sounds like your application has some of behaviour mode that depends on the thread completion state but that might be better handled in the message event handlers themselves thus completely decoupled from the message loop itself. Finally, it's more of a side issue but the timers you speak off which are updating the UI - are they able to be handled as idle time events instead or are they actually indicating timing related information to the user? Cheers, Paul. _______________________________________________ NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi mailing list Post: delphi@delphi.org.nz Admin: http://delphi.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi Unsubscribe: send an email to delphi-requ...@delphi.org.nz with Subject: unsubscribe _______________________________________________ NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi mailing list Post: delphi@delphi.org.nz Admin: http://delphi.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi Unsubscribe: send an email to delphi-requ...@delphi.org.nz with Subject: unsubscribe
