GUI status display

I want to have my cake and eat it too. With help from a previous posting, I have made a little status window. The difficulty I had was that if I tried to view a status window, the program would wait on the various events from the viewed window, so I never could update the window because the program would top running and just wait. If I used view/new to view the window, the program would continue running after showing the window. So I did that as shown below and all is working, but now, as a final touch, I would like to add a 'cancel' option to the status window so the operator can kill the program if it seems to be running too long. It appears that I can't do that, because the program is not waiting on window events, but is running along as desired. Do we think there is a way to pop up a status window, update it as the program runs, but then allow the program to be canceled somehow through that same status window? Thank you. Current efforts so far follow. R E B O L [ Title: 'Status display' Purpose: {Show a reassuring status box indicating what a program is doing and how far along it is.} ] ;; [---------------------------------------------------------------------------] ;; [ This module is a few functions you can use to show a status display ] ;; [ for a running program. You have to use them properly, because they ] ;; [ don't do any checking. ] ;; [ ] ;; [ SHOW-STATUS-WINDOW: Do this first, to get a the status window showing. ] ;; [ The view/new function shows the status box but lets your program ] ;; [ continue. ] ;; [ SHOW-PHASE (phase-literal): Display one line of text indicating what ] ;; [ the program is doing. Every time you call this function, the ] ;; [ previous phase gets put into a history display above the current. ] ;; [ SHOW-PROGRESS: (total-to-do amount-done): This function modifies the ] ;; [ progress bar with a fraction calculated as the amount done divided ] ;; [ by the total that must be done. Usually these are record counts, ] ;; [ as in 500 records processed out of a total of 20000. ] ;; [ That would look like this: STATUS-BAR/SHOW-PROGRESS 20000 500 ] ;; [ It is your job to keep track of those numbers. ] ;; [ RESET-PROGRESS: Reset the progress bar to zero. This function exists ] ;; [ in case you want to show several progress bars, one after another. ] ;; [ CLOSE-STATUS-WINDOW: This just executes the unview function to make ] ;; [ the status window disappear. ] ;; [---------------------------------------------------------------------------] STATUS-BOX: context [ MAIN-WINDOW: layout [ MAIN-BANNER: banner 'Program status' MAIN-HISTORY: text 200x50 wrap label 200 'Current phase:' MAIN-PHASE: info 200 label 200 'Progress on this phase' MAIN-PROGRESS: progress 200 ;;;; button 'Cancel' [alert 'Operation canceled' quit] ;;; Does not work. ] SHOW-STATUS-WINDOW: does [ view/new center-face MAIN-WINDOW ] SHOW-PHASE: func [ PHASE ] [ append MAIN-HISTORY/TEXT rejoin [ MAIN-PHASE/text newline ] MAIN-HISTORY/line-list: none MAIN-HISTORY/para/scroll/y: negate (max 0 (second size-text MAIN-HISTORY) - (MAIN-HISTORY/size/y)) show MAIN-HISTORY MAIN-PHASE/text: copy PHASE show MAIN-PHASE ] SHOW-PROGRESS: func [ FULL-SIZE AMOUNT-DONE ] [ set-face MAIN-PROGRESS (AMOUNT-DONE / FULL-SIZE) ] RESET-PROGRESS: does [ set-face MAIN-PROGRESS 0 ] CLOSE-STATUS-WINDOW: does [ unview ] ] ;; Uncomment to test STATUS-BOX/SHOW-STATUS-WINDOW wait 2 STATUS-BOX/SHOW-PHASE 'Initializing' wait 2 STATUS-BOX/SHOW-PHASE 'Phase 1' wait 2 STATUS-BOX/SHOW-PHASE 'Extracting data' CNT: 0 TOT: 100 loop 100 [CNT: CNT + 1 STATUS-BOX/SHOW-PROGRESS TOT CNT wait 0.1] wait 2 STATUS-BOX/SHOW-PHASE 'Processing data' STATUS-BOX/RESET-PROGRESS CNT: 0 TOT: 100 loop 100 [CNT: CNT + 1 STATUS-BOX/SHOW-PROGRESS TOT CNT wait 0.1] wait 2 STATUS-BOX/SHOW-PHASE 'Finishing' wait 3 STATUS-BOX/CLOSE-STATUS-WINDOW

Steve, I was reflecting of your status bar implementation when I realized "oh shoot I forgot checking the existence of threads in Rebol". Although not part of the language(yet :-) here is a solution: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2708494/rebol-how-to-do-another-task-while-waiting-an-alarm-to-trigger I speculate Rebol can use the OS context switching through the graphic library timer. Look for this line: rate 1 feel [engage: :periodic] in https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2708494/rebol-how-to-do-another-task-while-waiting-an-alarm-to-trigger I modified to allow dynamic rate increase which in turn increases the number of context switching as reported by Sysinternal Process Explorer (in properties). Have fun! R E B O L [ Title: "Alarmer" Original File: %alarm.r Author: oofoe Date: 2010-04-28 Purpose: "Demonstrate non-blocking alarm." File: %thread-alarm02.r Modified: "by OneArb to dynamic change rate" Date: 2017-03-02 ] myrate: 1 alarm-data: none digit: charset "0123456789" alarm: func [ "Set alarm for future time." seconds "Seconds from now to ring alarm." message [string! unset!] "Message to print on alarm." ] [ alarm-data: reduce [now/time/precise + seconds message] ] ring: func [ "Action for when alarm comes due." message [string! unset!] ] [ set-face monitor either message [message]["RIIIING!"] ; Your sound playing can also go here (my computer doesn't have speakers). ] periodic: func [ "Called every second / myrate, checks alarms." fact action event ] [ print now/time/precise if alarm-data [ ; Update alarm countdown. set-face monitor rejoin [ "Alarm will ring in " to time! alarm-data/1 - now/time/precise ] ; Check alarm. if now/time/precise > alarm-data/1 [ ring alarm-data/2 alarm-data: none ; Reset once fired. ] ] ] screen: [ text "Try change rate" myrate-field: field form myrate [ if (parse myrate-field/text [any digit]) [ myrate: to-integer myrate-field/text ] view center-face layout screen focus myrate-field ] monitor: text 256 bold "Alarm messages will be shown here." rate myrate feel [ engage: :periodic ] button 256 "re/start countdown" [ alarm 10 "This is the alarm message." set-face monitor "Alarm set." ] ] print "" view/new center-face layout screen focus myrate-field do-events

You can do this: R E B O L [] ;; [---------------------------------------------------------------------------] ;; [ This module is a few functions you can use to show a status display ] ;; [ for a running program. You have to use them properly, because they ] ;; [ don"t do any checking. ] ;; [ ] ;; [ SHOW-STATUS-WINDOW: Do this first, to get a the status window showing. ] ;; [ The view/new function shows the status box but lets your program ] ;; [ continue. ] ;; [ SHOW-PHASE (phase-literal): Display one line of text indicating what ] ;; [ the program is doing. Every time you call this function, the ] ;; [ previous phase gets put into a history display above the current. ] ;; [ SHOW-PROGRESS: (total-to-do amount-done): This function modifies the ] ;; [ progress bar with a fraction calculated as the amount done divided ] ;; [ by the total that must be done. Usually these are record counts, ] ;; [ as in 500 records processed out of a total of 20000. ] ;; [ That would look like this: STATUS-BAR/SHOW-PROGRESS 20000 500 ] ;; [ It is your job to keep track of those numbers. ] ;; [ RESET-PROGRESS: Reset the progress bar to zero. This function exists ] ;; [ in case you want to show several progress bars, one after another. ] ;; [ CLOSE-STATUS-WINDOW: This just executes the unview function to make ] ;; [ the status window disappear. ] ;; [---------------------------------------------------------------------------] write %status-window.r { R E B O L [title: "status"] SHOW-PHASE: func [ PHASE ] [ append MAIN-HISTORY/TEXT rejoin [ MAIN-PHASE/text newline ] MAIN-HISTORY/line-list: none MAIN-HISTORY/para/scroll/y: negate (max 0 (second size-text MAIN-HISTORY) - (MAIN-HISTORY/size/y)) show MAIN-HISTORY MAIN-PHASE/text: copy PHASE show MAIN-PHASE ] SHOW-PROGRESS: func [ FULL-SIZE AMOUNT-DONE ] [ set-face MAIN-PROGRESS (AMOUNT-DONE / FULL-SIZE) ] RESET-PROGRESS: does [ set-face MAIN-PROGRESS 0 ] CLOSE-STATUS-WINDOW: does [ quit ] MAIN-WINDOW: layout [ MAIN-BANNER: banner "Program status" MAIN-HISTORY: text 200x50 wrap label 200 "Current phase:" MAIN-PHASE: info 200 label 200 "Progress on this phase" MAIN-PROGRESS: progress 200 button "Cancel" [alert "Operation canceled" quit] ] view/new center-face MAIN-WINDOW forever [ old: read %status.r wait .5 if not viewed? MAIN-WINDOW [quit] if old <> current: read %status.r [do current] ] } write %status.r "" launch %status-window.r ;; Uncomment to test wait 2 write %status.r {SHOW-PHASE "Initializing"} wait 2 write %status.r {SHOW-PHASE "Phase 1"} wait 2 write %status.r {SHOW-PHASE "Extracting data"} CNT: 0 TOT: 100 loop 100 [CNT: CNT + 1 write %status.r rejoin [{SHOW-PROGRESS } TOT { } CNT] wait 0.1] wait 2 write %status.r {SHOW-PHASE "Processing data"} write %status.r {RESET-PROGRESS} CNT: 0 TOT: 100 loop 100 [CNT: CNT + 1 write %status.r rejoin [{SHOW-PROGRESS } TOT { }CNT] wait 0.1] wait 2 write %status.r {SHOW-PHASE "Finishing"} wait 3 write %status.r {CLOSE-STATUS-WINDOW} Better yet, send the messages through a network connection. Why not avoid all this and just print status updates to the console?

The console is the way I have been doing it. I just wanted to try something different.