How can I force gtk events during a long callback - gtk

Question

I need an event which handles press and release on toolbar button of my program.
I used button-press-event but when i click on my button nothing happens.
I'm designing my GUI using Glade Interface Designer. Please explain for me when button-press-event will be called in gtk+ & is it the event i need or not ?
'button-press-event' should give mouse button presses. I use gtk_widget_add_device_events () to add button presses to the list of events that are received by the button but I think it should get them by default.
gboolean
on_skip_backward_toolbutton_pressed (GtkWidget *widget, GdkEventButton *event, gpointer user_data)
{
g_print ("pressed");
timeout_id = g_timeout_add(500, (GSourceFunc) change_freq_timeout, (gpointer) FALSE);
return FALSE;
}
gboolean
on_skip_forward_toolbutton_pressed(GtkWidget *widget, GdkEventButton *event, gpointer user_data)
{
g_print ("pressed");
timeout_id = g_timeout_add(500, (GSourceFunc) change_freq_timeout, (gpointer) TRUE);
return FALSE;
}
gboolean
on_skip_toolbutton_released(GtkWidget *widget, GdkEventButton *event, gpointer user_data)
{
g_print ("released");
if (timeout_id) {
g_source_remove(timeout_id);
timeout_id = 0;
}
return FALSE;
}
change_freq_timeout callback has a single instruction that takes a long time to process.
Running a mainiteration inside an timeout handler is generally considered `a bad idea' because it doesn't work very well.
Exist the other secret technique that can use to solve problem?