Question

As the title implies I would like to be able to run a function asynchronous in a GUI created with RGtk2.

The function in itself is an R wrapper for a system command, thus the bulk of the processing time is used on a system() call, and the processing time can range from 10 min to an hour. I would like the GUI to still be responsive in that period.

As it is now the function is put in a gSignalConnect(GtkButton, ‘clicked’) and the rest of the GUI is thus unresponsive until the ‘clicked’ signal is terminated.

Does anyone have an idea regarding whether this is possible?

best
Thomas

Answer 1

There might be a more direct way, but I think you can do this with gTimeoutAdd:

library(RGtk2)

w <- gtkWindow()
g <- gtkVBox(); w$add(g)
b1 <- gtkButton("Start timer"); g$packStart(b1)
b2 <- gtkButton("click me"); g$packStart(b2)


gSignalConnect(b1, "clicked", function(...) {
  id <- gTimeoutAdd(1, function(...) {
    Sys.sleep(5)                        # replace me
    message("Okay, I'm up")
    FALSE                               # one shot
  })
})
gSignalConnect(b2, "clicked", function(...) message('clicked me'))