[PD] pd and serial object

[Bob Falesch]

[serial i/o under win32] -- even when using a separate worker-thread,
i've usually wound up using non-blocking modes (generally "overlapped
i/o", rarely "i/o completion ports"). this is with sockets and pipes
too.  asking a thread to terminate when it's got a blocking call can be
messy, and polling-with-timeouts can be inefficient (horribly so if on
the primary thread). without studying the pd serial issue further, i
don't have any specific recommendations, but bear in mind that
OVERLAPPED (asynchronous) is needed to enable more than one operation to
be performed with the same handle, like a simultaneous read and write.
also the ReadFile() and WriteFile() functions need a _lpOverlapped_
parameter the points to a OVERLAPPED structure (this maintains
buffer-position pointers that would otherwise be done by the system
under the covers). 

cheers,
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