Hi Wiggins,

Tk is not thread safe, so you should not expect to be able to manage a gui from two threads in the same process.

However, that shouldn't stop you from doing ALL gui management from within one thread (preferrably the parent), and setting up a worker thread to handle otherwise potentially-blocking actions (such as LWP fetches).  For that, you may want to look at using threads::shared.

To do this, construct the thread before setting up the gui.  I've created an example program for you which illustrates this:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# Always use 'strict' and 'warnings'
use strict;
use warnings;

# Libraries
use threads;
use threads::shared;
use Thread::Queue;
use Tk;
use Tk::ROText;

# Globals
my $rotext = 0;                         # The Read-only text widget
my $n_lines_waiting: shared = 0;        # Message passing between thre
+ads
my $p_queue  = Thread::Queue->new();    # Construct message 'Queue'


####################
### Main program ###
####################

# Startup worker thread
my $gui_thr = threads->create(\&worker_thread);

# Only *now* is it safe to construct the GUI, from the parent thread
gui();

                                                                      
+          
###################
### Subroutines ###
###################

# This subroutine is ONLY called from the parent thread
sub gui {
    my $mw = MainWindow->new();
    my $top = $mw->Frame()->pack(-expand => 1, -fill => 'both');
    my $bt = $top->Button(-bg => 'skyblue', -text => "Exit");
    $bt->configure(-command => sub { $mw->destroy() });
    $rotext = $top->ROText(-bg => 'white');
    $rotext->pack();
    $bt->pack();
    $mw->repeat(1000 => \&main_loop);
    MainLoop;
}


sub main_loop {
    if ($n_lines_waiting) {
        fetch_worker_data();
    }
}


sub fetch_worker_data {
    for (my $i = 0; $i < $n_lines_waiting; $i++) {
        my $line = $p_queue->dequeue();
        $rotext->insert("end", "$line\n");
    }
    $rotext->insert("end", "--- End of $n_lines_waiting line(s) ---\n"
+);
    $rotext->see("end");
    my $mw = $rotext->toplevel();
    $mw->update();
    $n_lines_waiting = 0;
}


# This subroutine is ONLY called in the worker thread
sub worker_thread {
    while (1) {
        sleep 3;
        worker_simulate_data();
    }
}


sub worker_simulate_data {
    my $nlines = int(rand(10));
    ($nlines > 0) or return;
    my $timestamp = localtime(time);
    for (my $i = 0; $i < $nlines; $i++) {
        my $idx = $i + 1;
        my $line = "[$timestamp]  Random line of text #$idx";
        $p_queue->enqueue($line);
    }
    $n_lines_waiting = $nlines;
}
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The subroutine worker_simulate_data is called by the worker_thread subroutine every 3 seconds, and creates from 0 to 9 lines of data, which are then queued using Thread::Queue.  Finally, the shared variable $n_lines_waiting is set to the number of lines waiting in the queue.

The parent thread gets the signal of how many lines are waiting via $n_lines_waiting, pulls this number of lines out of the shared queue, and writes them to the ROText window $rotext.

Note that the worker thread only writes new data if $n_lines_waiting is zero (otherwise there are lines waiting which haven't been read by the parent thread yet).

Of course, you are free to do other operations within the main_loop, as well as modify worker_thread so that it uses real-life data rather than a simulation.

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