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Notifier(3) Tcl Library Procedures Notifier(3)
______________________________________________________________________________
NAME
Tcl_CreateEventSource, Tcl_DeleteEventSource, Tcl_SetMaxBlockTime,
Tcl_QueueEvent, Tcl_ThreadQueueEvent, Tcl_ThreadAlert,
Tcl_GetCurrentThread, Tcl_DeleteEvents, Tcl_InitNotifier,
Tcl_FinalizeNotifier, Tcl_WaitForEvent, Tcl_AlertNotifier,
Tcl_SetTimer, Tcl_ServiceAll, Tcl_ServiceEvent, Tcl_GetServiceMode,
Tcl_SetServiceMode, Tcl_ServiceModeHook, Tcl_SetNotifier - the event
queue and notifier interfaces
SYNOPSIS
#include <tcl.h>
void
Tcl_CreateEventSource(setupProc, checkProc, clientData)
void
Tcl_DeleteEventSource(setupProc, checkProc, clientData)
void
Tcl_SetMaxBlockTime(timePtr)
void
Tcl_QueueEvent(evPtr, position)
void
Tcl_ThreadQueueEvent(threadId, evPtr, position)
void
Tcl_ThreadAlert(threadId)
Tcl_ThreadId
Tcl_GetCurrentThread()
void
Tcl_DeleteEvents(deleteProc, clientData)
ClientData
Tcl_InitNotifier()
void
Tcl_FinalizeNotifier(clientData)
int
Tcl_WaitForEvent(timePtr)
void
Tcl_AlertNotifier(clientData)
void
Tcl_SetTimer(timePtr)
int
Tcl_ServiceAll()
int
Tcl_ServiceEvent(flags)
int
Tcl_GetServiceMode()
int
Tcl_SetServiceMode(mode)
void
Tcl_ServiceModeHook(mode)
void
Tcl_SetNotifier(notifierProcPtr)
ARGUMENTS
Tcl_EventSetupProc *setupProc (in) Procedure to invoke
to prepare for event
wait in
Tcl_DoOneEvent.
Tcl_EventCheckProc *checkProc (in) Procedure for
Tcl_DoOneEvent to
invoke after waiting
for events. Checks
to see if any events
have occurred and,
if so, queues them.
ClientData clientData (in) Arbitrary one-word
value to pass to
setupProc,
checkProc, or
deleteProc.
const Tcl_Time *timePtr (in) Indicates the
maximum amount of
time to wait for an
event. This is
specified as an
interval (how long
to wait), not an
absolute time (when
to wakeup). If the
pointer passed to
Tcl_WaitForEvent is
NULL, it means there
is no maximum wait
time: wait forever
if necessary.
Tcl_Event *evPtr (in) An event to add to
the event queue.
The storage for the
event must have been
allocated by the
caller using
Tcl_Alloc or
ckalloc.
Tcl_QueuePosition position (in) Where to add the new
event in the queue:
TCL_QUEUE_TAIL,
TCL_QUEUE_HEAD, or
TCL_QUEUE_MARK.
Tcl_ThreadId threadId (in) A unique identifier
for a thread.
Tcl_EventDeleteProc *deleteProc (in) Procedure to invoke
for each queued
event in
Tcl_DeleteEvents.
int flags (in) What types of events
to service. These
flags are the same
as those passed to
Tcl_DoOneEvent.
int mode (in) Indicates whether
events should be
serviced by
Tcl_ServiceAll.
Must be one of
TCL_SERVICE_NONE or
TCL_SERVICE_ALL.
Tcl_NotifierProcs* notifierProcPtr (in) Structure of
function pointers
describing notifier
procedures that are
to replace the ones
installed in the
executable. See
REPLACING THE
NOTIFIER for
details.
______________________________________________________________________________
INTRODUCTION
The interfaces described here are used to customize the Tcl event loop.
The two most common customizations are to add new sources of events and
to merge Tcl's event loop with some other event loop, such as one
provided by an application in which Tcl is embedded. Each of these
tasks is described in a separate section below.
The procedures in this manual entry are the building blocks out of
which the Tcl event notifier is constructed. The event notifier is the
lowest layer in the Tcl event mechanism. It consists of three things:
[1] Event sources: these represent the ways in which events can be
generated. For example, there is a timer event source that
implements the Tcl_CreateTimerHandler procedure and the after
command, and there is a file event source that implements the
Tcl_CreateFileHandler procedure on Unix systems. An event
source must work with the notifier to detect events at the right
times, record them on the event queue, and eventually notify
higher-level software that they have occurred. The procedures
Tcl_CreateEventSource, Tcl_DeleteEventSource, and
Tcl_SetMaxBlockTime, Tcl_QueueEvent, and Tcl_DeleteEvents are
used primarily by event sources.
[2] The event queue: for non-threaded applications, there is a
single queue for the whole application, containing events that
have been detected but not yet serviced. Event sources place
events onto the queue so that they may be processed in order at
appropriate times during the event loop. The event queue
guarantees a fair discipline of event handling, so that no event
source can starve the others. It also allows events to be saved
for servicing at a future time. Threaded applications work in a
similar manner, except that there is a separate event queue for
each thread containing a Tcl interpreter. Tcl_QueueEvent is
used (primarily by event sources) to add events to the event
queue and Tcl_DeleteEvents is used to remove events from the
queue without processing them. In a threaded application,
Tcl_QueueEvent adds an event to the current thread's queue, and
Tcl_ThreadQueueEvent adds an event to a queue in a specific
thread.
[3] The event loop: in order to detect and process events, the
application enters a loop that waits for events to occur, places
them on the event queue, and then processes them. Most
applications will do this by calling the procedure
Tcl_DoOneEvent, which is described in a separate manual entry.
Most Tcl applications need not worry about any of the internals of the
Tcl notifier. However, the notifier now has enough flexibility to be
retargeted either for a new platform or to use an external event loop
(such as the Motif event loop, when Tcl is embedded in a Motif
application). The procedures Tcl_WaitForEvent and Tcl_SetTimer are
normally implemented by Tcl, but may be replaced with new versions to
retarget the notifier (the Tcl_InitNotifier, Tcl_AlertNotifier,
Tcl_FinalizeNotifier, Tcl_Sleep, Tcl_CreateFileHandler, and
Tcl_DeleteFileHandler must also be replaced; see CREATING A NEW
NOTIFIER below for details). The procedures Tcl_ServiceAll,
Tcl_ServiceEvent, Tcl_GetServiceMode, and Tcl_SetServiceMode are
provided to help connect Tcl's event loop to an external event loop
such as Motif's.
NOTIFIER BASICS
The easiest way to understand how the notifier works is to consider
what happens when Tcl_DoOneEvent is called. Tcl_DoOneEvent is passed a
flags argument that indicates what sort of events it is OK to process
and also whether or not to block if no events are ready.
Tcl_DoOneEvent does the following things:
[1] Check the event queue to see if it contains any events that can
be serviced. If so, service the first possible event, remove it
from the queue, and return. It does this by calling
Tcl_ServiceEvent and passing in the flags argument.
[2] Prepare to block for an event. To do this, Tcl_DoOneEvent
invokes a setup procedure in each event source. The event
source will perform event-source specific initialization and
possibly call Tcl_SetMaxBlockTime to limit how long
Tcl_WaitForEvent will block if no new events occur.
[3] Call Tcl_WaitForEvent. This procedure is implemented
differently on different platforms; it waits for an event to
occur, based on the information provided by the event sources.
It may cause the application to block if timePtr specifies an
interval other than 0. Tcl_WaitForEvent returns when something
has happened, such as a file becoming readable or the interval
given by timePtr expiring. If there are no events for
Tcl_WaitForEvent to wait for, so that it would block forever,
then it returns immediately and Tcl_DoOneEvent returns 0.
[4] Call a check procedure in each event source. The check
procedure determines whether any events of interest to this
source occurred. If so, the events are added to the event
queue.
[5] Check the event queue to see if it contains any events that can
be serviced. If so, service the first possible event, remove it
from the queue, and return.
[6] See if there are idle callbacks pending. If so, invoke all of
them and return.
[7] Either return 0 to indicate that no events were ready, or go
back to step [2] if blocking was requested by the caller.
CREATING A NEW EVENT SOURCE
An event source consists of three procedures invoked by the notifier,
plus additional C procedures that are invoked by higher-level code to
arrange for event-driven callbacks. The three procedures called by the
notifier consist of the setup and check procedures described above,
plus an additional procedure that is invoked when an event is removed
from the event queue for servicing.
The procedure Tcl_CreateEventSource creates a new event source. Its
arguments specify the setup procedure and check procedure for the event
source. SetupProc should match the following prototype:
typedef void Tcl_EventSetupProc(
ClientData clientData,
int flags);
The clientData argument will be the same as the clientData argument to
Tcl_CreateEventSource; it is typically used to point to private
information managed by the event source. The flags argument will be
the same as the flags argument passed to Tcl_DoOneEvent except that it
will never be 0 (Tcl_DoOneEvent replaces 0 with TCL_ALL_EVENTS). Flags
indicates what kinds of events should be considered; if the bit
corresponding to this event source is not set, the event source should
return immediately without doing anything. For example, the file event
source checks for the TCL_FILE_EVENTS bit.
SetupProc's job is to make sure that the application wakes up when
events of the desired type occur. This is typically done in a
platform-dependent fashion. For example, under Unix an event source
might call Tcl_CreateFileHandler; under Windows it might request
notification with a Windows event. For timer-driven event sources such
as timer events or any polled event, the event source can call
Tcl_SetMaxBlockTime to force the application to wake up after a
specified time even if no events have occurred. If no event source
calls Tcl_SetMaxBlockTime then Tcl_WaitForEvent will wait as long as
necessary for an event to occur; otherwise, it will only wait as long
as the shortest interval passed to Tcl_SetMaxBlockTime by one of the
event sources. If an event source knows that it already has events
ready to report, it can request a zero maximum block time. For
example, the setup procedure for the X event source looks to see if
there are events already queued. If there are, it calls
Tcl_SetMaxBlockTime with a 0 block time so that Tcl_WaitForEvent does
not block if there is no new data on the X connection. The timePtr
argument to Tcl_WaitForEvent points to a structure that describes a
time interval in seconds and microseconds:
typedef struct Tcl_Time {
long sec;
long usec;
} Tcl_Time;
The usec field should be less than 1000000.
Information provided to Tcl_SetMaxBlockTime is only used for the next
call to Tcl_WaitForEvent; it is discarded after Tcl_WaitForEvent
returns. The next time an event wait is done each of the event
sources' setup procedures will be called again, and they can specify
new information for that event wait.
If the application uses an external event loop rather than
Tcl_DoOneEvent, the event sources may need to call Tcl_SetMaxBlockTime
at other times. For example, if a new event handler is registered that
needs to poll for events, the event source may call Tcl_SetMaxBlockTime
to set the block time to zero to force the external event loop to call
Tcl. In this case, Tcl_SetMaxBlockTime invokes Tcl_SetTimer with the
shortest interval seen since the last call to Tcl_DoOneEvent or
Tcl_ServiceAll.
In addition to the generic procedure Tcl_SetMaxBlockTime, other
platform-specific procedures may also be available for setupProc, if
there is additional information needed by Tcl_WaitForEvent on that
platform. For example, on Unix systems the Tcl_CreateFileHandler
interface can be used to wait for file events.
The second procedure provided by each event source is its check
procedure, indicated by the checkProc argument to
Tcl_CreateEventSource. CheckProc must match the following prototype:
typedef void Tcl_EventCheckProc(
ClientData clientData,
int flags);
The arguments to this procedure are the same as those for setupProc.
CheckProc is invoked by Tcl_DoOneEvent after it has waited for events.
Presumably at least one event source is now prepared to queue an event.
Tcl_DoOneEvent calls each of the event sources in turn, so they all
have a chance to queue any events that are ready. The check procedure
does two things. First, it must see if any events have triggered.
Different event sources do this in different ways.
If an event source's check procedure detects an interesting event, it
must add the event to Tcl's event queue. To do this, the event source
calls Tcl_QueueEvent. The evPtr argument is a pointer to a dynamically
allocated structure containing the event (see below for more
information on memory management issues). Each event source can define
its own event structure with whatever information is relevant to that
event source. However, the first element of the structure must be a
structure of type Tcl_Event, and the address of this structure is used
when communicating between the event source and the rest of the
notifier. A Tcl_Event has the following definition:
typedef struct {
Tcl_EventProc *proc;
struct Tcl_Event *nextPtr;
} Tcl_Event;
The event source must fill in the proc field of the event before
calling Tcl_QueueEvent. The nextPtr is used to link together the
events in the queue and should not be modified by the event source.
An event may be added to the queue at any of three positions, depending
on the position argument to Tcl_QueueEvent:
TCL_QUEUE_TAIL Add the event at the back of the queue, so that
all other pending events will be serviced
first. This is almost always the right place
for new events.
TCL_QUEUE_HEAD Add the event at the front of the queue, so
that it will be serviced before all other
queued events.
TCL_QUEUE_MARK Add the event at the front of the queue, unless
there are other events at the front whose
position is TCL_QUEUE_MARK; if so, add the new
event just after all other TCL_QUEUE_MARK
events. This value of position is used to
insert an ordered sequence of events at the
front of the queue, such as a series of Enter
and Leave events synthesized during a grab or
ungrab operation in Tk.
When it is time to handle an event from the queue (steps 1 and 4 above)
Tcl_ServiceEvent will invoke the proc specified in the first queued
Tcl_Event structure. Proc must match the following prototype:
typedef int Tcl_EventProc(
Tcl_Event *evPtr,
int flags);
The first argument to proc is a pointer to the event, which will be the
same as the first argument to the Tcl_QueueEvent call that added the
event to the queue. The second argument to proc is the flags argument
for the current call to Tcl_ServiceEvent; this is used by the event
source to return immediately if its events are not relevant.
It is up to proc to handle the event, typically by invoking one or more
Tcl commands or C-level callbacks. Once the event source has finished
handling the event it returns 1 to indicate that the event can be
removed from the queue. If for some reason the event source decides
that the event cannot be handled at this time, it may return 0 to
indicate that the event should be deferred for processing later; in
this case Tcl_ServiceEvent will go on to the next event in the queue
and attempt to service it. There are several reasons why an event
source might defer an event. One possibility is that events of this
type are excluded by the flags argument. For example, the file event
source will always return 0 if the TCL_FILE_EVENTS bit is not set in
flags. Another example of deferring events happens in Tk if
Tk_RestrictEvents has been invoked to defer certain kinds of window
events.
When proc returns 1, Tcl_ServiceEvent will remove the event from the
event queue and free its storage. Note that the storage for an event
must be allocated by the event source (using Tcl_Alloc or the Tcl macro
ckalloc) before calling Tcl_QueueEvent, but it will be freed by
Tcl_ServiceEvent, not by the event source.
Threaded applications work in a similar manner, except that there is a
separate event queue for each thread containing a Tcl interpreter.
Calling Tcl_QueueEvent in a multithreaded application adds an event to
the current thread's queue. To add an event to another thread's queue,
use Tcl_ThreadQueueEvent. Tcl_ThreadQueueEvent accepts as an argument
a Tcl_ThreadId argument, which uniquely identifies a thread in a Tcl
application. To obtain the Tcl_ThreadId for the current thread, use
the Tcl_GetCurrentThread procedure. (A thread would then need to pass
this identifier to other threads for those threads to be able to add
events to its queue.) After adding an event to another thread's queue,
you then typically need to call Tcl_ThreadAlert to "wake up" that
thread's notifier to alert it to the new event.
Tcl_DeleteEvents can be used to explicitly remove one or more events
from the event queue. Tcl_DeleteEvents calls proc for each event in
the queue, deleting those for with the procedure returns 1. Events for
which the procedure returns 0 are left in the queue. Proc should match
the following prototype:
typedef int Tcl_EventDeleteProc(
Tcl_Event *evPtr,
ClientData clientData);
The clientData argument will be the same as the clientData argument to
Tcl_DeleteEvents; it is typically used to point to private information
managed by the event source. The evPtr will point to the next event in
the queue.
Tcl_DeleteEventSource deletes an event source. The setupProc,
checkProc, and clientData arguments must exactly match those provided
to the Tcl_CreateEventSource for the event source to be deleted. If no
such source exists, Tcl_DeleteEventSource has no effect.
CREATING A NEW NOTIFIER
The notifier consists of all the procedures described in this manual
entry, plus Tcl_DoOneEvent and Tcl_Sleep, which are available on all
platforms, and Tcl_CreateFileHandler and Tcl_DeleteFileHandler, which
are Unix-specific. Most of these procedures are generic, in that they
are the same for all notifiers. However, none of the procedures are
notifier-dependent: Tcl_InitNotifier, Tcl_AlertNotifier,
Tcl_FinalizeNotifier, Tcl_SetTimer, Tcl_Sleep, Tcl_WaitForEvent,
Tcl_CreateFileHandler, Tcl_DeleteFileHandler and Tcl_ServiceModeHook.
To support a new platform or to integrate Tcl with an application-
specific event loop, you must write new versions of these procedures.
Tcl_InitNotifier initializes the notifier state and returns a handle to
the notifier state. Tcl calls this procedure when initializing a Tcl
interpreter. Similarly, Tcl_FinalizeNotifier shuts down the notifier,
and is called by Tcl_Finalize when shutting down a Tcl interpreter.
Tcl_WaitForEvent is the lowest-level procedure in the notifier; it is
responsible for waiting for an "interesting" event to occur or for a
given time to elapse. Before Tcl_WaitForEvent is invoked, each of the
event sources' setup procedure will have been invoked. The timePtr
argument to Tcl_WaitForEvent gives the maximum time to block for an
event, based on calls to Tcl_SetMaxBlockTime made by setup procedures
and on other information (such as the TCL_DONT_WAIT bit in flags).
Ideally, Tcl_WaitForEvent should only wait for an event to occur; it
should not actually process the event in any way. Later on, the event
sources will process the raw events and create Tcl_Events on the event
queue in their checkProc procedures. However, on some platforms (such
as Windows) this is not possible; events may be processed in
Tcl_WaitForEvent, including queuing Tcl_Events and more (for example,
callbacks for native widgets may be invoked). The return value from
Tcl_WaitForEvent must be either 0, 1, or -1. On platforms such as
Windows where events get processed in Tcl_WaitForEvent, a return value
of 1 means that there may be more events still pending that have not
been processed. This is a sign to the caller that it must call
Tcl_WaitForEvent again if it wants all pending events to be processed.
A 0 return value means that calling Tcl_WaitForEvent again will not
have any effect: either this is a platform where Tcl_WaitForEvent only
waits without doing any event processing, or Tcl_WaitForEvent knows for
sure that there are no additional events to process (e.g. it returned
because the time elapsed). Finally, a return value of -1 means that
the event loop is no longer operational and the application should
probably unwind and terminate. Under Windows this happens when a
WM_QUIT message is received; under Unix it happens when
Tcl_WaitForEvent would have waited forever because there were no active
event sources and the timeout was infinite.
Tcl_AlertNotifier is used in multithreaded applications to allow any
thread to "wake up" the notifier to alert it to new events on its
queue. Tcl_AlertNotifier requires as an argument the notifier handle
returned by Tcl_InitNotifier.
If the notifier will be used with an external event loop, then it must
also support the Tcl_SetTimer interface. Tcl_SetTimer is invoked by
Tcl_SetMaxBlockTime whenever the maximum blocking time has been
reduced. Tcl_SetTimer should arrange for the external event loop to
invoke Tcl_ServiceAll after the specified interval even if no events
have occurred. This interface is needed because Tcl_WaitForEvent is
not invoked when there is an external event loop. If the notifier will
only be used from Tcl_DoOneEvent, then Tcl_SetTimer need not do
anything.
Tcl_ServiceModeHook is called by the platform-independent portion of
the notifier when client code makes a call to Tcl_SetServiceMode. This
hook is provided to support operating systems that require special
event handling when the application is in a modal loop (the Windows
notifier, for instance, uses this hook to create a communication
window).
On Unix systems, the file event source also needs support from the
notifier. The file event source consists of the Tcl_CreateFileHandler
and Tcl_DeleteFileHandler procedures, which are described in the
Tcl_CreateFileHandler manual page.
The Tcl_Sleep and Tcl_DoOneEvent interfaces are described in their
respective manual pages.
The easiest way to create a new notifier is to look at the code for an
existing notifier, such as the files unix/tclUnixNotfy.c or
win/tclWinNotify.c in the Tcl source distribution.
REPLACING THE NOTIFIER
A notifier that has been written according to the conventions above can
also be installed in a running process in place of the standard
notifier. This mechanism is used so that a single executable can be
used (with the standard notifier) as a stand-alone program and reused
(with a replacement notifier in a loadable extension) as an extension
to another program, such as a Web browser plugin.
To do this, the extension makes a call to Tcl_SetNotifier passing a
pointer to a Tcl_NotifierProcs data structure. The structure has the
following layout:
typedef struct Tcl_NotifierProcs {
Tcl_SetTimerProc *setTimerProc;
Tcl_WaitForEventProc *waitForEventProc;
Tcl_CreateFileHandlerProc *createFileHandlerProc;
Tcl_DeleteFileHandlerProc *deleteFileHandlerProc;
Tcl_InitNotifierProc *initNotifierProc;
Tcl_FinalizeNotifierProc *finalizeNotifierProc;
Tcl_AlertNotifierProc *alertNotifierProc;
Tcl_ServiceModeHookProc *serviceModeHookProc;
} Tcl_NotifierProcs;
Following the call to Tcl_SetNotifier, the pointers given in the
Tcl_NotifierProcs structure replace whatever notifier had been
installed in the process.
It is extraordinarily unwise to replace a running notifier. Normally,
Tcl_SetNotifier should be called at process initialization time before
the first call to Tcl_InitNotifier.
EXTERNAL EVENT LOOPS
The notifier interfaces are designed so that Tcl can be embedded into
applications that have their own private event loops. In this case,
the application does not call Tcl_DoOneEvent except in the case of
recursive event loops such as calls to the Tcl commands update or
vwait. Most of the time is spent in the external event loop of the
application. In this case the notifier must arrange for the external
event loop to call back into Tcl when something happens on the various
Tcl event sources. These callbacks should arrange for appropriate Tcl
events to be placed on the Tcl event queue.
Because the external event loop is not calling Tcl_DoOneEvent on a
regular basis, it is up to the notifier to arrange for Tcl_ServiceEvent
to be called whenever events are pending on the Tcl event queue. The
easiest way to do this is to invoke Tcl_ServiceAll at the end of each
callback from the external event loop. This will ensure that all of
the event sources are polled, any queued events are serviced, and any
pending idle handlers are processed before returning control to the
application. In addition, event sources that need to poll for events
can call Tcl_SetMaxBlockTime to force the external event loop to call
Tcl even if no events are available on the system event queue.
As a side effect of processing events detected in the main external
event loop, Tcl may invoke Tcl_DoOneEvent to start a recursive event
loop in commands like vwait. Tcl_DoOneEvent will invoke the external
event loop, which will result in callbacks as described in the
preceding paragraph, which will result in calls to Tcl_ServiceAll.
However, in these cases it is undesirable to service events in
Tcl_ServiceAll. Servicing events there is unnecessary because control
will immediately return to the external event loop and hence to
Tcl_DoOneEvent, which can service the events itself. Furthermore,
Tcl_DoOneEvent is supposed to service only a single event, whereas
Tcl_ServiceAll normally services all pending events. To handle this
situation, Tcl_DoOneEvent sets a flag for Tcl_ServiceAll that causes it
to return without servicing any events. This flag is called the
service mode; Tcl_DoOneEvent restores it to its previous value before
it returns.
In some cases, however, it may be necessary for Tcl_ServiceAll to
service events even when it has been invoked from Tcl_DoOneEvent. This
happens when there is yet another recursive event loop invoked via an
event handler called by Tcl_DoOneEvent (such as one that is part of a
native widget). In this case, Tcl_DoOneEvent may not have a chance to
service events so Tcl_ServiceAll must service them all. Any recursive
event loop that calls an external event loop rather than Tcl_DoOneEvent
must reset the service mode so that all events get processed in
Tcl_ServiceAll. This is done by invoking the Tcl_SetServiceMode
procedure. If Tcl_SetServiceMode is passed TCL_SERVICE_NONE, then
calls to Tcl_ServiceAll will return immediately without processing any
events. If Tcl_SetServiceMode is passed TCL_SERVICE_ALL, then calls to
Tcl_ServiceAll will behave normally. Tcl_SetServiceMode returns the
previous value of the service mode, which should be restored when the
recursive loop exits. Tcl_GetServiceMode returns the current value of
the service mode.
SEE ALSO
Tcl_CreateFileHandler(3), Tcl_DeleteFileHandler(3), Tcl_Sleep(3),
Tcl_DoOneEvent(3), Thread(3)
KEYWORDS
event, notifier, event queue, event sources, file events, timer, idle,
service mode, threads
Tcl 8.1 Notifier(3)