[vtkusers] Building a VTK application as a server using sockets?

[kent williams]

I have been asked to build a VTK application to display volumetric
images for debugging image processing software.  The basic idea would
be that the image processing application could during it's execution,
send either image data or an image filename to a server program for
display.

I know how to build an application to display images using VTK (and
KWWidgets).  What I'm a little foggy on is how to integrate the socket
communication into the VTK event loop.

I see a fairly straightforward class, vtkSocketCommunicator, that
would handle the interprocess communication just fine, but I don't
know how to integret the socket listening into the VTK event loop.

In KWWidgets, it looks like I could set up a server in TCL using the
tcl socket command, and have it invoke a wrapped C++ function when
messages are received on the socket.  This feels a little bit 'behind
the back' of KWWidgets, though.

Has anyone else played with this sort of thing and could point me at an example?