[PyKDE] Seperating logic code from gui code?

[David Boddie]

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005, Arthur Pemberton wrote:

> Ideally, the console client would be simply a downloader, while the GUI
> would use the same mechanisms to access the data, but give more
> interactivty (renaming, prioritizing of downloads, etc.) Not sure if this
> is the information you meant that was missing.

OK. So you could implement the downloader in such a way that makes it
fairly independent from the way it was invoked. Perhaps it would perform
blocking network operations using modules from the Python standard library,
or maybe you would provide a way for the main application to monitor its
progress and interrupt it if required.

Keeping the GUI interactive while a long-term operation is being performed
can be a challenge, especially if the control isn't returned until the
operation is finished. There are ways to ensure that the GUI interface is
refreshed while this occurs: by calling QApplication.processEvents() or
by performing the operation in a separate thread.

Note that GUI programming has to be performed in the main thread - you can't
(easily) make calls to PyQt from a separate thread.

If the console-only version of the client doesn't use PyQt, and you want to
use the same implementation in the GUI client, you can probably use Python's
threading module to run the downloader in a separate thread. I guess this
should work with PyQt for Qt 3 as long as you don't use the Qt's threading
features. You may not use threading in the console-only client - users may be
satisifed with a client that only provides feedback once it is finished.

I hope this advice is helpful, even if it is a bit vague. I'm sure others
will correct me if what I've said is confusing.

David