loop in body of main program

I'm in Windows XP, and I'm trying to write something like this:


while going:
     do stuff


def on_startButton_mouseClick(...):
    going = 1

def on_stopButton_mouseClick(...):
     going = 0


My problem is where to put the loop. The best example I could find in 
the samples was the Gravity program. That program puts the loop in 
the startButton handler, and Gravity works fine on my machine.]When I 
do that in my program, it works  fine until I push the stop button. 
Then it freezes up and I have to kill it. I also tried putting the 
loop in an on_idle(...) method and got the same results.

I got around it finally using a timer and it's handler to replace the 
loop completely, but that's no good to me for two reasons:

2. it's too complicated for beginning students
1. the whole point was to expose them to loops

I think the RIGHT way to do this is to use a thread for the loop, but 
that's also too much for beginning students.


Any advice gratefully accepted.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------
Jimmy Wilkinson            | Professor Emeritus of Computer Science
[email protected]        | The College of Charleston
(843) 953-8160             | Charleston      SC        29424
http://www.cs.cofc.edu/~jimmy

If there is one word to describe me, that word would have to be 
"profectionist".

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