Re: [Pan-users] Re: NZB files directly from firefox or other browser or file manager.

[Joe Zeff]

On 10/13/2009 Alan Meyer wrote:
> That seems safer to me than killing a process you had forgotten
> was running or, if on a multi-user system, a process that another
> user was running.

I have, several times, caused problems by accidentally starting Pan 
twice without realizing it.  (Mostly, the program gets tangled up about 
which articles have been read until I edit the newsrec file.)  I'd like 
to suggest that Pan create a file, pan.lok, in its own directory and 
remove it again on exit so that you can't have two copies using the same 
configuration at the same time.  (For Linux, at least, you can open the 
file, creating it, delete it and then close it at exit because the 
delete will be delayed until after it's closed.  That way, if Pan 
crashes, the lock still gets removed.  Alas, I don't remember what 
happens under Windows if you try that; you might need to run Pan from a 
batch file that makes sure the lock goes away even if the program failed 
to clean up properly.)

--
Joe Zeff
If you can't play with words, what good are they?
http://www.zeff.us http://www.lasfs.info