multithreading and Tkinter

[Cameron Laird]

In article <mailman.1016728725.9585.python-list at python.org>,
Laura Creighton  <lac at strakt.com> wrote:
>> Greetings:
>> How do I signal the GUI thread that new information for a particular
>> object has arrived?  Currently I'm using after() method of the Tkinter
>> object to update info for *all* objects every second, but that is
>> hardly a good design, since there may be 500 of them, and the new info
>> can be arriving once every 15 minutes.
>> 
>> Any ideas and/or pointers to the documentation (preferably online)
>> highly appreciated.
>
>You want to use Queue.Queue() to make yourself a nice incoming
>queue, and fill it with the data that arrived and the object(s) that 
>care(s) about it.  You'll still use after, but you will only update
>the objects that care, and only when something has arrived.  See
>http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/82965
>
>Laura Creighton
>

Excellent advice from both Laura and Aahz.

There's been very casual chatter among Tk insiders about
(in Tkinter-speak) making update a method of individual
widgets.  It definitely doesn't exist now, it appears to
require guru-level concentration, and we're still not
sure it's even feasible in some appropriate sense;
however, I think it's worth alerting readers of this
thread that there's a possibility of an interesting
enhancement in the indefinite future.
-- 

Cameron Laird <Cameron at Lairds.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html