Marshal - What does it Mean - in Plain English?

[Frankie]

I have been learning about asynchronous method calls and I keep coming
across this term, "marshal" and I would like to know what it means -
specifically. AFAIKT, it means "send" but I suspect there is a bit more than
that.

Looking to online docs, MSDN talks about the System.Runtime. Interop.Marshal
class - but I don't think that's relevant to what I'm seeing. Maybe it is...

The following is an example of the sort of thing I've been reading... so you
can see the context in which "marshal" is being used, that I am wondering
about:

<quote>
Other objects can retrieve the Form's Synchronization Context object through
the Current property and use it later for marshaling delegate invocations to
the Form's thread. In this way, Forms no longer have to check to see if an
event they are responding to originated on another thread. The marshaling
has already been taken care of elsewhere. In essence, the responsibility for
marshaling events has been moved from the receiver of an event to the
sender.
</quote>

Does marshal, as used in the above <quotesimply mean "we're going to send
the delegate/method invocation call from one thread to another"?? such that
the method executes on the other thread???

Thanks!

[G Himangi]

In .Net/COM context 'Marshal' means send / make available / convert in
suitable format if required.

---------
- G Himangi, Sky Software http://www.ssware.com
Shell MegaPack : GUI Controls For Drop-In Windows Explorer like Shell
Browsing Functionality For Your App (.Net & ActiveX Editions).
EZNamespaceExte nsions.Net : Develop namespace extensions rapidly in .Net
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---------

"Frankie" <[e-mail] in message
news:uQ******** ******@TK2MSFTN GP05.phx.gbl...

>I have been learning about asynchronous method calls and I keep coming
across this term, "marshal" and I would like to know what it means -
specifically . AFAIKT, it means "send" but I suspect there is a bit more
than that.

Looking to online docs, MSDN talks about the
System.Runtime. Interop.Marshal class - but I don't think that's relevant
to what I'm seeing. Maybe it is...

The following is an example of the sort of thing I've been reading... so
you can see the context in which "marshal" is being used, that I am
wondering about:

<quote>
Other objects can retrieve the Form's Synchronization Context object
through the Current property and use it later for marshaling delegate
invocations to the Form's thread. In this way, Forms no longer have to
check to see if an event they are responding to originated on another
thread. The marshaling has already been taken care of elsewhere. In
essence, the responsibility for marshaling events has been moved from the
receiver of an event to the sender.
</quote>

Does marshal, as used in the above <quotesimply mean "we're going to
send the delegate/method invocation call from one thread to another"??
such that the method executes on the other thread???

Thanks!