Multithreading this sample code:

Question

So here's some code on http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/16a2216b39513674 in which the poster writes that he's shortened ideas into a single threaded app. A respondent below his post says, essentially, that's great, nice work, but there are benefits to multithreading so things don't interfere with other stuff on your handset.

My question is: Evidently, the original poster reduced, distilled ideas from multithreaded examples he saw in order to make them easier to read, posted them, cool. But what would a multithreaded version of the below code look like?

Would Runnable be on a separate thread? Or the whole callback? Or not those but something else? Anything else?

Would it be even better if it were run as a service, and then a Runnable thread spawned from the service? Is a service considered a separate thread from the UI?

As you can tell this question is about the basics of multithreading for Android. Thanks for any info.

public class Something extends Activity { 
    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle saved) { 
      super.onResume(); 
      final EGL10 egl = (EGL10) EGLContext.getEGL(); 
      final EGLDisplay eglDisplay = egl.eglGetDisplay(EGL10.EGL_DEFAULT_DISPLAY); 
      int[] version = new int[2]; 
      egl.eglInitialize(eglDisplay, version); 

      int[] configSpec = { 
          // EGL10.EGL_DEPTH_SIZE, 8, 
          EGL10.EGL_NONE 
      }; 

      final EGLConfig[] config = new EGLConfig[1]; 
      int num_configs[] = new int[1]; 
      egl.eglChooseConfig(eglDisplay, configSpec, config, 1, num_configs); 
      final EGLContext eglContext = egl.eglCreateContext(eglDisplay, config[0], EGL10.EGL_NO_CONTEXT, null); 

      // Setting up layouts and views 
      SurfaceView view = new SurfaceView(this); 
      setContentView(view); 

      SurfaceHolder holder = view.getHolder(); 
      holder.setType(SurfaceHolder.SURFACE_TYPE_GPU); 
      final GL10 gl = (GL10) eglContext.getGL(); 
      final Handler handler = new Handler(); 

      holder.addCallback(new Callback() {
        private EGLSurface surface; 
        private Runnable painter; 

        @Override 
        public void surfaceChanged(SurfaceHolder holder, int format, int width, int height) { 
          // initialize GL projection and other stuff 
          // gl.glMatrixMode(GL10.GL_PROJECTION); 
          // gl.glFrustumf(left, right, bottom, top, zNear, zFar); 
          // ... 
          painter = new Runnable() { 
            @Override 
            public void run() { 
              drawFrame(gl); 
              egl.eglSwapBuffers(eglDisplay, surface); 
              handler.post(this); 
            } 
          }; 
          handler.post(painter); 
        } 
        @Override 
        public void surfaceCreated(SurfaceHolder holder) { 
          surface = egl.eglCreateWindowSurface(eglDisplay, config[0], holder, null); 
          egl.eglMakeCurrent(eglDisplay, surface, surface, eglContext); 
        } 
        @Override 
        public void surfaceDestroyed(SurfaceHolder holder) { 
          handler.removeCallbacks(painter); 
        } 
      });
    } 

    private void drawFrame(GL10 gl) { 
      // Frame drawing... 
      long t = System.currentTimeMillis() % 10000; 
      gl.glClearColor(t / (float) 10000, t / (float) 10000 ,1 , 1); 
      gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); 
    } 
}

Answer 1

Read about AsyncTask in a great article from Google Android Team titled Painless threading

As with my own words, AsyncTask is an intelligent Thread that has two methods that run on UI thread, so you can update your UI in those methods.