On Wed, Nov 01, 2006 at 09:15:08PM +0100, Joost Verburg wrote: > Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote: > > Joost> Agreed. As I said earlier, the developers can use a setting so > > Joost> it will be possible for them to run multiple LyX processes. > > Joost> That will be useful for debugging, testing etc. > > > > Or useful in real life, for people who know what they are doing. > > Yes. But even though I know what I'm doing, I prefer the software to > prevent me from making mistakes.
Yes, but I also prefer that the software does what I want and not that I should do as the software wants (that's why I hate Windows software). Then, as I already said, if you limit yourself in what you can do, you may have strange surprises. For example, you edit a file using a UNC path (\\machine\path\file.lyx) in your laptop, then shutdown the computer and go home. When at home (where you don't have an internet connection, or you are not able to access that UNC path due to firewall settings, or whatever) you launch lyx and will be surprised that it seems to be hanging. LyX is trying to ascertain if \\machine\path\file.lyx exists in order to show/not show it in the "Open recent" submenu. To your dismay you discover that it is not possible to kill lyx using Task Manager, so your only option is to reboot the computer. Indeed, even if you manually edit session/lastfiles to remove the UNC path but you are not able to launch another instance of lyx, you will have no other choice than waiting even for 15 minutes that the computer reboots (yes, that happened to me and it took almost 15 minutes before Windows rebooted, and in the meantime you cannot do anything else). Yes, Windows tries to protect me, but often I don't want that. So, to "protect" me it does not let me delete or change a file in use by another application. Great! I am protected but I cannot recompile using pdflatex if at the same time I am viewing the file in acrobat, or, as I recently discovered in MikTeX 2.5, even in yap with a dvi file. Regarding this last example, when MikTeX 2.5 becomes more widespread, expect a lot of complains that pplatex or clean_dvi.py failed. Thank you for the protection, Windows. Not! Here is a funny reading: http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/94q2/footoss.html -- Enrico
