delays opening messages/bug report

[Tom Hughes]

In message <e1d7f98349.rav21 at wallace.mk-net.demon.co.uk>
          Richard van der Hoff <rav21 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> The issue is this:  I have quite a number of folders, which take quite a
> while for RemoteNB to scan (of the order of several seconds).  This hapens
> in the background, which is fine until one tries to do something else at
> the same time, such as open a message;  there is then no indication that
> anything is happening (except for the server's HDD light flicking), and
> the user is left wondering if he did actually press the spacebar or
> double-click, and also gets bored waiting.

I can see that this would be a problem. It's a little tricky to fix
because the polling is done by the same thread that handles requests
from the client.

I think I've come up with a solution though but I'm probably going
to leave it for 1.07 as I'm trying to iron out the last few problems
in 1.06 so I can release it.

> Worse, if I try to open another message in this period, I eventually end
> up with two copies of the _second_ message, and Mpro is thoroughly
> confused as to what the first message was.  Also if I tried to open the
> message from an existing message window (ie space/right arrow), then
> closing it during the problem period results in a Messenger internal
> inconsistency (no. 23 IIRC).  I guess these are bugs that need fixing?

I thought all those problems had been fixed in recent versions of
Messenger-Pro but you seem to be using the latest one so obviously
they havn't ;-(

> Obviously the ideal would be to interrupt the scan to fetch the message,
> or even to let them happen in parallel (which I guess would require a
> second connectiuon to the server); I don't know how possible this would
> be.  Failing that, some sort of indication that something is actually
> happening?

I am planning to interrupt the scan by having a separate thread do
the scan in the background and relinquish control after each group
if there is anything more important waiting to be done.

Tom

-- 
Tom Hughes (tom at compton.nu)
http://www.compton.nu/
...My goal is a simple one: To live forever - or die trying.