Appeal 2007-2127
Reexamination Control No. 90/006,621
foreground work, which controls interaction with the user, and
another thread to control background work, which performs the bulk
of the work in support of the user's application.
Nguyen, Advanced Programmer's Guide to OS/2, published in 1989,
discloses (page 9):
The next advantage of multitasking lies in the way in which the
end user's relationship to the computer changes. All of us are familiar
with the frustration of waiting for our word processor to check the
spelling of a document, or for the computer to re-index a large
database, or re-calculate a spreadsheet. During these times we cannot
continue to work. In a multitasking system the user can continue to
add text to his or her document, while the spelling of each word is
checked automatically as it is entered.
Nguyen also discloses (page 25):
Having multiple sections of code execute asynchronously (at
the same time) greatly increases the speed of applications when these
sections implement a group of logically independent functions. For
example, the editing, printing, and spell-checking functions of a word
processor are completely independent of one another. There is no
logical reason why a user should not continue to edit his document
while running a spell-check, using the printing facility, managing the
files on his drive, or even formatting a disk.
n. Creating threads
A process consists of at least one thread. A "multithreaded" process
has multiple threads, which execute concurrently. Additional threads in the
same process have to be created by special instructions, which are used by
the operating system. See Deitel, An Introduction to Operating Systems,
page 790 ("A process's first thread is created automatically by OS/2 when
the process is created; additional threads are created with the
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