But note that while this would eliminate the exception thrown by this “assert” it will not eliminate the subtle bugs that are really there because your UI updates are not being done in the event thread. So, even though things appear to work, there really are problems that will end up biting you at some point. That was the reason for putting in this assert, to alert you to the fact that there are really problems that you are not aware of.
~Roger From: Andrei Pozolotin [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 12:31 PM To: [email protected] Cc: Roger L. Whitcomb; [email protected] Subject: Re: 2.0.1 release and threads Lukas: you can provide a temporary work around by providing an alternative implementation to thread checker used by assert org.apache.pivot.wtk.Container.assertEventDispatchThread Andrei -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: 2.0.1 release and threads From: Roger L. Whitcomb <[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]> To: [email protected], [email protected] Date: Mon 16 Jan 2012 12:39:29 PM CST Hi Lukas, That approach is still valid (and encouraged) EXCEPT that all updates to the UI MUST happen in the Event Dispatch Thread (or 'EDT'). This is now enforced in 2.0.1 (as you can see). This is inherent, not only in Pivot, but all other GUI frameworks (that I know of). So, even though it "appeared" to work fine with 2.0, there are/were subtle problems that you just didn't see yet. What you need to do is use either a TaskAdapter class or call the ApplicationContext.queueCallback() method to schedule your UI updates in the EDT, rather than doing them directly in the background thread. For an example you can look at the Tutorial here: http://pivot.apache.org/tutorials/background-tasks.html. I can step you through your code in more detail if you need more help. Our application also has a number of places where we have needed to do this. I'm going to transfer this to the User list since this is not a developer issue, per se, since it is not a bug. It is, however, something that has definitely changed (for the better) in 2.0.1. Thank you for using Pivot, though!! ~Roger -----Original Message----- From: Lukáš Macháček [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 8:17 AM To: [email protected] Subject: 2.0.1 release and threads Hi all, I am now testing coming 2.0.1 release of Pivot libraries with my desktop application developed during previous year on Pivot 2.0 and am facing one great problem with threads :-( Every task which loads data at background and worked in 2.0 well now throws exception like this: java.lang.IllegalStateException: this method can only be called from the AWT event dispatch thread, and not from "Thread-26" at org.apache.pivot.wtk.Container$1.check(Container.java:872) at org.apache.pivot.wtk.Container.assertEventDispatchThread(Container.java:880) at org.apache.pivot.wtk.Component.repaint(Component.java:2047) at org.apache.pivot.wtk.Component.repaint(Component.java:1998) at org.apache.pivot.wtk.skin.ComponentSkin.repaintComponent(ComponentSkin.java:351) at org.apache.pivot.wtk.skin.ComponentSkin.repaintComponent(ComponentSkin.java:346) at org.apache.pivot.wtk.skin.terra.TerraTableViewSkin.enabledChanged(TerraTableViewSkin.java:1394) at org.apache.pivot.wtk.Component$ComponentStateListenerList.enabledChanged(Component.java:399) at org.apache.pivot.wtk.Component.setEnabled(Component.java:2173) at cz.cgrim.alchemist.dql.RunQueryTask.execute(RunQueryTask.java:58) at cz.cgrim.alchemist.dql.RunQueryTask.execute(RunQueryTask.java:23) at org.apache.pivot.util.concurrent.Task$ExecuteCallback.run(Task.java:42) at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:471) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:334) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:166) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722) In this example at first it disables TableView (to disable user interaction during background load of data), than it loaded results from DQL query into that TableView and at the end it enabled that TableView. I have tens of use cases with similar approach in my application used to load data at background because it can take long time to finish while user can work on another tasks. Another equal problem with thread has occurred for example in my custom Log4J Appender: Exception in thread "Timer-2" java.lang.IllegalStateException: this method can only be called from the AWT event dispatch thread, and not from "Timer-2" at org.apache.pivot.wtk.Container$1.check(Container.java:872) at org.apache.pivot.wtk.Container.assertEventDispatchThread(Container.java:880) at org.apache.pivot.wtk.Component.invalidate(Component.java:1955) at org.apache.pivot.wtk.skin.ComponentSkin.invalidateComponent(ComponentSkin.java:340) at org.apache.pivot.wtk.skin.TextAreaSkinParagraphView.textRemoved(TextAreaSkinParagraphView.java:419) at org.apache.pivot.wtk.TextArea$Paragraph$ParagraphListenerList.textRemoved(TextArea.java:55) at org.apache.pivot.wtk.TextArea$Paragraph.removeText(TextArea.java:153) at org.apache.pivot.wtk.TextArea.insertText(TextArea.java:757) at org.apache.pivot.wtk.TextArea.insertText(TextArea.java:730) at cz.cgrim.alchemist.logger.TextAreaAppender.append(TextAreaAppender.java:41) at org.apache.log4j.AppenderSkeleton.doAppend(AppenderSkeleton.java:251) at org.apache.log4j.helpers.AppenderAttachableImpl.appendLoopOnAppenders(AppenderAttachableImpl.java:66) at org.apache.log4j.Category.callAppenders(Category.java:206) at org.apache.log4j.Category.forcedLog(Category.java:391) at org.apache.log4j.Category.log(Category.java:856) at com.documentum.fc.common.DfLogger.warn(DfLogger.java:151) at com.documentum.fc.client.impl.bof.cache.ClassCacheManager$CacheCleanupTask.run(ClassCacheManager.java:602) at java.util.TimerThread.mainLoop(Timer.java:555) at java.util.TimerThread.run(Timer.java:505) Here I simply implement AppenderSkeleton and append every line from LoggingEvent into Pivot's TextPane. Log4J runs it in separate thread. Please, is now there another approach how to use threads and Pivot's Task to do changes in GUI or is it a bug? In 2.0 release everything spoken here worked like a charm. Thanks for an advance. Lukas Machacek
