Proper threading? (technical spects)

[Brian Morrison]

On Fri, 11 Jun 1999 11:05:23 -0400, Jonathan B. Bayer wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
>On Fri, 11 Jun 1999 16:44:26 +0100, Dr. Martin R. Hadam wrote:
>
>> Please note that this is a proof of concept - not an actual code
>>sample. Yet it *could* be done with that conceptual single line. But
>>even in a worst case scenario (for performance reasons), no need for
>>more than a few (trivial) lines of code.
>
>I am jumping in here because of the above statement.
>
>I recently released a program called Power Listviewer, which DOES
>implement threading both for message digests and individual messages. 
>Let me assure you that the work involved is more than just "a few
>(trivial) lines of code".  I repeatedly delayed the release of my
>program because these "few" lines of code turned out to be more
>complicated than you can believe.  At the present it is more than 400
>lines of C and C++ code., not counting the comments.
>

I did ask Southsoft about changing the PMMail sort arrangements, and
switching over to the PMINews methods.

BoB's reply was that the work to implement totally different containers
and controls would be huge, it would be bound to break everything and
require extensive debugging and delay the release. At that time they
did not have that time, due to other commitments and the fact that
PMINews 2 and PMMail were being released very close together.

I'd like to see better ways of doing what we all want, but I'm also
aware that there needs to be a lot of care taken to make the versions
coexist. The upcoming releases (I know no dates, so don't ask!) does,
among other things, bring the Win32 and OS/2 codebases into line (so
I'm led to believe). That will form the basis of future versions where
more extensive changes can be implemented without preventing those with
shared installations from keeping body and soul together.

Perhaps we will all be surprised by what Southsoft are able to do
(assuming that they read and act upon comments in this list) but I
wouldn't bank on it just yet.


-- 

Brian Morrison                                  bdm@fenrir.demon.co.uk

 'The village populace is jumpin' on faces, catchin' the javelin, 
 Headin' the shot.' [FX: wet thud - "Oooo.."]