ntubski is right.

The "ideal" solution will vary, but the basic idea is correct:

1. Polling is bad

2. You should always avoid polling by blocking.
Here, that means blocking on XNextEvent ()

3. If you want to do something periodically, you should set up some kind of "event" that will "signal" you at the right time.

Ntubski's suggestion about setting up an OS-level timer is a good idea.

If you're using Xt, Qt or GTK, you could use one of their timers. If you felt like spawning a thread, you could could put your "sleep()" there. There are *lots* of alternatives.

'Hope that helps .. PSM

PS:
Did I mention "Polling is Bad"? It *is* bad. "Evil", in fact. Honest!

@ntubski Yeah that looks like the only real solution, Ive done that before back in my Windows years, but didnt want to write all that code for a blinking cursor.

@paulsm4
The main selling point of my app is that it doesnt use any of these toolkits so that its extremely light weight.

I know polling for messages is bad, which is why I block in every area except this. Its such a simple thing I didnt want to have to complicate it.