Peculiar annotator behavior, please help.

Question

I am writting a tool similar to AI selection tool.
User clicks and drags a path, I use the annotator to draw the shape of the path new path to be, user releases the mouse, I stop the annotator and update the path to its new shape.
So, I open AI, start dragging an anchor of a path, I see the annotator draws then clear then draw etc.so you can see it flickers on and off very fast.
So, I switch to a different application, then switch back to AI and start again, thereafer it works, no more flickering.
Why switching back to AI makes it work? I hope I don't have to ask user to switch back to AI for it to work, that would be silly!
Has anybody experience the same thing? Is there a solution?
Thank you

Answer 1

I just want to get my final comment in and give this thread a rest.
No doubt in my mind the issue is with thread synchronization between the clearing and the drawing threads.
I hope someone from Adobe would be kind enough to admit this problem, so we don't implement tricks and patches
that would only mask the problem in some operating environments and not others. Synchronization issue need to be
fixed inside AI core, not try to mask it in the plugin, because it does not guarantee to mask the problem for all users.
Another thing is to give the plugin the ability to request a draw and a clear, and do not generate a draw automatically based on some
fixed conditions. The plugin knows when it wants to draw and when to clear. The drawing and clearing engines only need to synchonize
themselves and execute the plugin requests in the order recieved.