Why do I require a new event loop from a GUI?

[pitonyak]

I have some simple code to read a web page. You have seen the code before, it is very simple:

QNetworkRequest request;
  QUrl hostUrl;
  hostUrl.setUrl("http://qt.nokia.com");
  request.setUrl(hostUrl);
  QNetworkReply* reply = networkAccessManager->get(request);

QNetworkRequest request;
  QUrl hostUrl;
  hostUrl.setUrl("http://qt.nokia.com");
  request.setUrl(hostUrl);
  QNetworkReply* reply = networkAccessManager->get(request);

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Next, I connect more connections than seems reasonable. My question is, how should I do this in a GUI? My initial solution was to run this code in a slot that was called from a menu item. Of course, I have no response unless i start an event loop:

QEventLoop loop;
  loop.exec();

QEventLoop loop;
  loop.exec();

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I had expected that this would use the GUI's event loop (a GUI always has an event loop, right?) You know, started this way

QApplication a(argc, argv);
    MainWindow w;
    w.show();
    return a.exec();

QApplication a(argc, argv);
    MainWindow w;
    w.show();
    return a.exec();

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That said, I find it disturbing that I started an event loop in a handler for a menu command.