Extending a GTK+ Application with Guile

[Kevin J. Fletcher <dev@kjfletch.co.uk>]

Hello Guilers.

I'm currently writing some prototype code before starting a project and
have a few questions that I hope some of you may be able to answer.

My intent is to add guile as a method of [optionally, at build time]
extending a GTK+ application. With the addition of being able to run
guile scripts I hope to provide a guile-shell to give real-time
interactive power. First a question of program architecture;

As the guile extensions are optional I run GTK on a main thread and the
shell on a second pthread. I connect the shell through a PTY to the
virtual terminal widget.

I apologise to those with mail clients not using monospace fonts.

  THREAD1            THREAD2
 ---------           -------
| GTK     |   pty   | guile |
|     VTE |<------->| shell |
|  -----  |          -------
| guile   |
|  scripts|
 ---------

0) Is there anything wrong with this architecture?

   a) Is it valid to use both scm_shell and other guile code at the same
   time or is scm_shell designed to run in isolation?

   b) Not related to guile but while I'm here I may as well ask. Is there
   a more appropriate GTK+ method of communicating (STDIN, STDOUT,
   STERR) with the running application (to replace the VTE above)

1) scm_shell allows the `,q' command (and probably some other exit
routes) which kills the whole application. Is there a way to present a
shell (or similar subset) without the ability to exit?

2) Thinking of portability, is guile running on Windows (without
cygwin), to justify the claim of 'ubiquitous'?

Happy Hacking,
Kevin Fletcher.