Re: Need advice on Reminder program

[randhol+abuse@pvv.org (Preben Randhol)]

On 31 Jan 2001 13:08:55 -0500, Stephen Leake wrote:
>You only need to read the text file once, at startup, so you don't
>need a separate task for that. Hmm, you do need some way to add
>appointments; leave that for later?

I want the daemon to reread the file when it changes. I want the daemon
to run "forever" :-). To add apointments I want to use a different
program.

>When a dialog box is popped up, do you want the "timer" function to keep
>operating, to allow another dialog box to pop up before the first is
>closed? or just pop later ones up after the first is closed?

I want it to pop up and the daemon to continue to the next appointment.
I don't want to wait for user input.

>If you don't want multiple dialog boxes, one task is all you need.
>Depending on the details of the windowing toolkit (Gtk? Motif?), you
>may be able to popup multiple dialog boxes from one task.

GtkAda

>Keeping things simple is the key to keeping them reliable. Using more
>tasks than you really need is _not_ keeping it simple.

Yes :-)

>One confusion I often see is between "task" and "module". You
>definitely should have one _package_ for reading the text file, one
>package for poping up dialogs, and one package for managing the timer.
>That is _not_ the same as needing three _tasks_.

Yes, but I need the tasks so that if the user alters the appointments
the daemon will update itself to the new info. And to do that I think I
will need more than one task. :-)

But you are right that the less tasks the better so I'll think about
that and see if I can manage with one, I'll check what GtkAda can do in
this respect.

Thanks
-- 
Preben Randhol ---------------- http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/ --
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