"Jeff Higgins" <oohiggins@yahoo.com> wrote in news:WkMwi.33$oa7.27
@newsfe12.lga:

It's because when you have a space in the filename passed to the CMD
start command you need to specified a "title". This is a "feature" of the
start command! So something like

String[] cmdArray = {"cmd", "/c", "start", "\"\"",
 "\path\with\a space\sheet.xls"};
Runtime.getRuntime().exec(cmdArray);

should do the job. The fourth item of the cmdArray is the empty title.

Bye.

You missed my point completely (you weren't the only one).  The
path_to_.xls is rhetorical.  All you have to specify is the path to your
object file.  You don't need to know about what or where the program is
that will manipulate it.  It works if you have MS Excel or Open Office
or whatever.

Yes!

Very OO!

At least you got my point Lew :-).  I was using Runtime.exec() to
display some user docs in one of my programs and having all kinds of
problems with, and it took a lot of code.  With Desktop it was so simple
and the error handling if there is no appropriate program is just an
exception.

I read this post and thought to myself "hm, this idea of file
associations seems fairly standardized in the Windows world, but
in Unix?"  So I tried the almost-self-contained example upthread
(in a post by Andrew Thompson) on a Linux box [*], and ....  Wow.
Nothing very useful happens in a text-only console, which is not
a huge surprise, but under GNOME (desktop environment), opening
"empty.doc" brings up OpenOffice Writer.  Pretty cool, if one likes
this sort of functionality!  

[*] Fedora Core 4, if it matters.

Further investigation (skimming an entry in Sun's tutorial
about the new Desktop class and the API) indicates that file
associations are obtained via some sort of interaction with GNOME.
Experiment indicates that the "open", "browse", and "mail" actions
Just Work (to bring up appropriate programs), but that "edit"
and "print" aren't supported.  Huh.  I'm mildly curious about --
well, several things:

Is the lack of support for editing and printing is true on all
Linux (and Unix?) systems?  If so, I wonder why.

What happens if you try this stuff under a window manager / desktop
environment other than GNOME?

Is it easy to configure things to bring up one's own choice of
"appropriate programs" rather than whatever is set up by default
(on my system, Firefox for "browse", Evolution for "mail", and for
"open" something based on the file's extension -- e.g., OO Writer
for .doc, gedit for .txt)?

Below are two pieces of code, one to check which functions are
supported and another to try the ones that are on my system (open,
browse, mail), in case anyone wants to report results on other
systems.  Note that is pretty much quick-and-dirty-hack code.

==== check what's supported ====

import java.awt.*;
import java.io.*;

public class DesktopCheck {

   public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
       System.out.println("desktop supported?  " +
               Desktop.isDesktopSupported());
       Desktop dt = Desktop.getDesktop();
       for (Desktop.Action a : Desktop.Action.values()) {
           System.out.println("action " + a + " supported?  " +
                   dt.isSupported(a));
           
       }
   }
}

==== try some Desktop actions (adapted from Andrew's example) ====

import java.awt.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;

public class FileAssociation {

   public static void open(File document) throws Exception {
       Desktop dt = Desktop.getDesktop();
       dt.open(document);
   }
   public static void browse(URI document) throws Exception {
       Desktop dt = Desktop.getDesktop();
       dt.browse(document);
   }
   public static void mail(URI document) throws Exception {
       Desktop dt = Desktop.getDesktop();
       dt.mail(document);
   }

   public static void main(String[] args) {
       if (args.length < 3) {
           System.err.println("Need parameters:  " +
                   "filename to open, URL to browse, mail address");
           System.exit(1);
       }
       try {
           open(new File(args[0]));
       } catch(Exception ex) {
           ex.printStackTrace();
       }
       try {
           browse(new URI(args[1]));
       } catch(Exception ex) {
           ex.printStackTrace();
       }
       try {
           mail(new URI("mailto:" + args[2]));
       } catch(Exception ex) {
           ex.printStackTrace();
       }
   }
}

I know about it because Skitt is a regular in alt.usage.english,
where I also lurk and sometimes post.

No problem here.  Now, if you were to mix UK and US spellings,
that might raise a hackle or two, but strictly one or the other --
there are better things to argue about, maybe.