Hello, I m using allegro as graphical library for a theatre applications, remoting lights on stage.
( adress in signature)

I m working under windows and using mingw32 and dev-cpp.
I notice that going to another application was freezing timers and action of my program. I need to point and click on it to unfreeze it....

So i have 2 questions:
First, is there a way to unavoid this fact ?
Second, I want to use now the OSC protocol wich using UPD and permits to interact in real time with other programms ( on same computer or other computers):
http://www.audiomulch.com/~rossb/code/oscpack/

I want my program to be a server, waiting from orders in this protocol. As my program is controlling lights, it needs to be activ everytime. THATS THE MAIN POINT.
I want to be sure before working on this part that allergo structure do not make inherent troubles.

So, this is a real question.

I m very happy to use allegro. It permits me to design and create an application wich is beautifull by aspect and by use. That must be said to community of developpers from time to time ( )

sincerely yours, christoph

See here in the documentation: http://alleg.sourceforge.net/onlinedocs/en/alleg008.html#set_display_switch_mode

What you want is something like:

if (set_display_switch_mode(SWITCH_BACKGROUND))
    set_display_switch_mode(SWITCH_BACKAMNESIA));

excuse my frenglish

use set_display_mode() for constant running application, but be aware that allegro is a single threaded application, and not good for data processing of UDP and OSC when doing graphics at the same time.

This type of application would be better suited to multi-threaded, so that allegro will not effect your data processing, allegro would be useful as a graphical interface only.

are you sending data from the timer handler ?

how can you have accurate times for OSC packets if your busy drawing allegro graphics.

How time critical is sending the data ?