IT> More BOLSH. There is nothing stopping programs from sharing
 IT> resources under OS/2, only narrow minded application designers.

 IT> Process can share resources perfectly well as long as such
 IT> sharing is co-ordinated.

And the enforcement mechanism is to open the port with "deny
read/write" so that another process can NOT open the port.  The
co-ordination is performed by passing the handle to another process.

Anything else is just going to leave a headache for the end user, who is
not smart enough to enforce this on their own in a multitasking OS.

 IT> BOLSH again. The mechanism you are referring to is the restriction
 IT> imposed by Maximus when it opens the comm port, it has nothing 
 IT> whatsoever to do with anything being imposed by the operating system,
 IT> except that that is what has been requested of it when the
 IT> port was opened.

The serial port and parallel port are examples of devices are are
inherently single-user.  It is the applications programmer's duty to
protect them.

I don't care if this pisses off a few bbs sysops who are whining about not
being able to let a DOS door program re-open a com port illegally.

I guess I am just too used to writing programs that don't have bugs built
into them on purpose.


 IT> This mentallity of being the only user of every resource you open
 IT> is something which needs to be stamped out if we are to truly
 IT> multitask.

We are discussing a resource that is intrinsically single use.

The fact that you can not "monitor", as you say,  the device from
another session is a feature missing from com.sys.  It has nothing to do
with the application.


--- Maximus/2 2.02p1