how to quit the blocking of xlib's XNextEvent

Question

Under windows, the GUI thread usually call GetMessage to waiting for message, when another thread use PoseMessage put a message into the queue, then the GUI thread will retu

Answer 1

You can quit the blocking XNextEvent, by sending yourself a dummy event.

Window interClientCommunicationWindow;
Bool x11EventLoopActive = True;

// create a dummy window, that we can use to end the blocking XNextEvent call
interClientCommunicationWindow = XCreateSimpleWindow(dpy, root, 10, 10, 10, 10, 0, 0, 0);
XSelectInput(dpy, interClientCommunicationWindow, StructureNotifyMask);

XEvent event;
while(x11EventLoopActive) {
  XNextEvent(dpy, &event);
  ...
}

In another thread you can do this to end the loop:

x11EventLoopActive = False;
// push a dummy event into the queue so that the event loop has a chance to stop
XClientMessageEvent dummyEvent;
memset(&dummyEvent, 0, sizeof(XClientMessageEvent));
dummyEvent.type = ClientMessage;
dummyEvent.window = interClientCommunicationWindow;
dummyEvent.format = 32;
XSendEvent(dpy, interClientCommunicationWindow, 0, 0, (XEvent*)&dummyEvent);
XFlush(dpy);