the way I see it at least, polling is not a problem, Graphics work on frame loop, that means actions that have to repeat per frame , Unreal objects are constructed around this functionality , same way we have a World cycle that drawOn: methods work , then of course you have event loops etc. A signal mechanism would have been a callback functionality but frankly I dont think its necessary. My goal is to bring unreal closer to pharo , so that means I will use similar functionality to Morphic and Bloc for drawing to make easy for pharo guis to port to unreal because unreal is not only capable of 3d but also 2d graphics. So the idea is when the frame loops starts , execute first what Unreal has to execute , then read a message qeue where pharo will register messages very similar to pharo messaging . I may allow Pharo to assign messages to specific frames. Those messages will call functions/methods of the Unreal API. Of course it can work vice versa so that Unreal becomes aware of the Pharo enviroment and callback pharo mehods etc and even Blender methods (for asset creation) and I could even hook on this message que many other applications essential to build a common language that apps and libraries can talk to each other without depending on specific implementation and wrapper APIs. Thats the general idea , so far, open to redesign and rethinking depending on the obstacles I may face. On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 10:14 AM David Allouche <david@allouche.net> wrote:
On 17 Jan 2016, at 22:18, Dimitris Chloupis <kilon.alios@gmail.com> wrote:
Pipes are actually slower than sockets (local UNIX sockets that is) and I dont need sockets if I am using shared memory.
I could create an event que and not allow direct access to shared memory, this way I make sure everything happens in order and in sequence. This way I can make sure multiple writes and reads dont happen at the same time. This could be a first implementation and if the need arises for multi threading then I can revise this design but frankly I rather stay away from multithreading and other complexities and keep this simple and easy to learn and code.
You will still need a signalling channel so either side knows that it has new commands to process without having to poll.