[DUG] Stopping threads in applications

[Nick]

Hi there :-)

I have been using threads in applications for a while now, and one thing 
that always seems back to haunt me is stopping the thread.
When using TThread you can call the Terminate procedure which simply 
sets the FTerminated variable of the thread to True, which you then have 
to check for in  your thread like

If Terminated = false then
    begin
       do stuff
     end;

Which ok, can live with. But sometimes your doing something that wont 
free up right away and might take 3-4+ seconds to stop. Now if your like 
me when I click cancel / abort / stop I want the buttons and fields to 
become active again, and not have to wait a while before this happens. 
(ie, when starting a thread you might disable some input fields)

How do you handle threads? I guess it all depends on what it's doing etc.

Does it just mean should do more checking of If Terminated?

What do you do when your thread calls some procedure like so
 ...
if terminated = false then
 begin
   thread_safe_count_0_500;
 end;

if terminated = false then
    begin
           ...

the user is going to have to wait for that 0 to 500 procedure to finish, 
before it then reaches the next If Terminated check.

Seems a bit mickey mouse.

Nick