In many images that I do real development in (code writing, debugging, ..) I always get a number of processes stuck while waiting for a semaphore in SHTextStyler>>#styleInBackgroundProcess: I am in no way an expert in these areas, but today I tried the following change (waiting on the semaphore with a timeout): SHTextStyler>>#styleInBackgroundProcess: aText self terminateBackgroundStylingProcess. stylingEnabled ifTrue: [ text := aText copy. self monitor critical: [ sem := Semaphore new. [ sem ifNotNil: [ ((sem waitTimeoutMSecs: 250) not and: [ view notNil ]) ifTrue: [ view stylerStyledInBackground: text ] ] ] forkAt: Processor activePriority. backgroundProcess := [ self privateStyle: text. sem signal ] forkAt: Processor userBackgroundPriority ] ] Comments ? Sven