I might throw this tidbit in for you to consider: POE is an event loop system, as is Gtk2. So you are going to have to work out a way to let the 2 distinct event loops to work concurrently. Usually a timer run in your master loop, can do a 1-loop-update in the slave loop. Also, I havn't looked at POE lately, but it used to have a way to integrate Tk into it( look in the cookbook ), so you may be able to do the same with Gtk2( or ask a POE expert ).