pq10279.st AIX - HELP INDEX DOES NOT WORK For some reason, in order to get help items in a help index window, it is necessary to call XtAppNextEvent() and XtAppDispatchEvent() even when XtAppPending() indicated that there are no events in the event queue. Changing the code to always read and dispatch events, regardless of the result of XtAppPending(), fixes the problem. Why we cannot simply change our event loop: VisualAge for Smalltalk does not use native AIX threads. In order to ensure that these simulated threads will run, VisualAge cannot sleep in the OS when there are no events pending in the event queue. If VisualAge is sleeping, then VisualAge threads are not running. This is why the VisualAge event loop checks for events using XtAppPending() before calling XtAppNextEvent(). We eventually do sleep in the OS when there are no VisualAge threads ready to run. File in 10279.st to fix the problem.