Multi-threaded design mechanism and methodology for dynamic menu management in GUI application

摘要

A system and method that allows dynamic menu management when a user selects a graphical object using inter-thread communications. The present invention is a part of a program, or graphical user interface (GUI), designed to execute in a windowing system such as Microsoft Windows or X-Windows. The GUI performs time-consuming computations when a user selects an object. The mechanism described herein provides immediate response to the user actions at all times regarding the computations caused by selection changes. When a user makes a second selection prior to completion of the time-consuming computations resulting from the first selection, the first selection thread is gracefully terminated and the second selection thread is allowed to run.