Free from appleEvents processing

["Vincent Keunen" <keunen@montefiore.ulg.ac.be>]

I have an application in HyperCard that, sometimes, sends a request to MCL
for some processing (via AppleEvents).  This processing is not essential
(ie, the HC application can go on even if MCL has problems processing the
job).  What I'd like is to send the request and *always* return
*immediately* to HC.  I don't want the HC process to be halted in any case
(be it that MCL hangs, goes into an infinite loop, waits a very long time
for the printer or the network,...).

How could I do that?

I probably need :

- a way to send an AE that does not wait for the reply;
- a way to send an AE and return to the sender even if there are problems
sending the event;
- a way in MCL to catch all errors (for that, a handler-case on error would
suffice, I guess - that I can do);
- a way to detect programmatically that a lisp program is stuck or looping
(a timeout could be enough, I guess);

How can I implement these?  Any direct solutions or pointers would be
appreciated (note: I'm not an inside mac'er...).

Thanks for any help,

Vincent

--
Keunen Vincent
R&D, Software Engineer
keunen@montefiore.ulg.ac.be
tel: +32 41 407282
fax: +32 41 481170