Re: Questions about throw-on-input

[Ivan Yonchovski <yyoncho@gmail.com>]

Hi Eli,

> By "processing all keyboard events" do you mean invoking the commands
> those events are bound to?

Yes.

> If so, I don't think we have machinery to do that in Emacs: there's
> too much of global state that would get in the way.

Here it is overly simplistic code that is close to what I am trying to
achieve.

(defun process-events ()
  (when (input-pending-p)
    (run-with-timer 0.01 nil (lambda () (throw 'exit nil)))
    (recursive-edit)))

(dotimes (counter 1000)
  (sleep-for 0.01) ;; simulate execution of N tasks
  (message "%s" counter)
  (process-events))

This code is able to handle C-n but obviously it will break if someone
starts another recursive-edit or for complex keybindings, e. g. `C-x b`.
Are you aware of something doing something similar? Do you think it
makes sense if you want to process something slow on the background
without blocking emacs?

> AFAIU, such facilities need to have a separate event loop that
> generally runs in a separate thread.

In the C# case it all happens on the UI thread. DoEvents means handle
mouse clicks, repaint controls, etc(the stuff from the event loop) and
then continue with current execution.

Thanks,
Ivan