Can you get a DXL script to run "in the background" ?

DXLNeed - Thu Mar 26 05:22:53 EDT 2009
You can run a DXL code in background, but you can not have any dialog box in that DXL file.

Also you want user to work on parallely then you have to make sure that the background DXL should not touch any item which can be user by the user in active mode.

kbmurphy - Wed Mar 25 12:51:18 EDT 2009
There are people more technical in DOORS than I am, but I'm going to give you my layman answer.

No.

Here's a secret: DOORS is DXL. And DOORS is single-threaded. This means that for all intents and purposes, DOORS can only do one thing at a time.

Tony_Goodman - Thu Mar 26 05:56:19 EDT 2009
"DOORS can only do one thing at a time."

I knew DOORS was male and not female.

Tony_Goodman - Thu Mar 26 05:54:17 EDT 2009
The following code implements a non-blocking dialog that shows a digital clock. It uses the timer() perm that was introduced in DOORS 8.2.

This continues to run while the user can do other things, although you will notice that the clock is not updated in real time if DOORS gets busy when opening a module for example.

// How to use a timer on a dialog.

/*
First stab at using undocumented timer perms.

Displays the curent time which is updated every second.
Buttons demonstrate how to stop and restart the timer.

This is really good news for my Tetris for DOORS script
because I will be able to make the shapes fall on their own!!!

Requires DOORS 8.2.

Tony Goodman Smart DXL Limited.
*/

DB db = null
DBE dbeClock = null
DBE dbeTime = null
DBE dbeStart = null
DBE dbeStop = null
int interval = 1

// callback on timer updates the display
void doClock(DBE dbe)
{
string s = stringOf(dateAndTime(today))
set(dbeTime, s11:)
}

// start the clock
void doStart(DB db)
{
if (startTimer(dbeClock))
{
inactive(dbeStart)
active(dbeStop)
}
}

// stop the clock
void doStop(DB db)
{
if (stopTimer(dbeClock))
{
active(dbeStart)
inactive(dbeStop)
}
}
db = create(dbExplorer, "Test", styleCentered)

dbeTime = field(db, "Current time", "", 10, true)

// create the timer. Don't know what string parameter is for.
dbeClock = timer(db, interval, doClock, "")

dbeStart = apply(db, "Start", doStart)
dbeStop = apply(db, "Stop", doStop)

realize db

setCenteredSize(db, 170, 100)
inactive(dbeStart)
show db

Tony_Goodman - Thu Mar 26 05:56:19 EDT 2009
"DOORS can only do one thing at a time."

I knew DOORS was male and not female.