Long running functions in javascript?

Peter Wilson <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.mozilla.devel.xpcom
Organization Another Netscape Collabra Server User
Message-ID <[email protected]> 
Can Javascript put long running processes into another thread so that
they don't block the UI thread?

Can such a thread update a progress meter on the UI?

I have found references to proxies, eventQueues etc. but no actual code.
For a while it looked like LDAP was using JS in this way - but they have
moved to c++.

Any pointers/examples?

Alternatively, is there an equivalent to the (hated) doEvents() function
in MS Basic?

Reason: I have an xml file with 12,000 xml lines in it. When
loading/transforming  it (using JS)  the UI locks for about 2 minutes.
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