alarm() on PC/MSoft (long)

[John D. Gwinner]

Michael:

> I read today the same in MSDN CD-roms. The bottom
> line is that, so far, it looks that there is no way
> to have an async event for a Win process. 

?  I thought you wanted a timer routine; can't you use the the winmm timer
services as mentioned?  They don't require the message loop.

> This is so
> fundamentaly basic that it is hard for me to belive.
> I'll post a question on MS developers mailing lists.
> I can't belive that nobody came up with a solution.

Well, not to be flippant but one solution is to use a message pump. 
Frankly, that's the 'right way' to do it.  I realize this would be a
radical redesign in many ways.  The other thing to do is use the threads
that NT provides, which are much lower weight than Unix threads.
 
> I talked today to a friend who works with NT kernel
> and she told me that such facility is available in the
> kernel. My instructor for NT kernel/drivers said that
> the lack of these facilities are what makes NT very
> much un-realtime.

Depends on how much real time you need; it's real time enough to play
musical instruments and record music.  NT is also real time enough to burn
CD's and other things, but to get this level of timers you have to mess
with vxd's, which I think is overkill for Kaffe, but I could be wrong.

		== John ==