Launch command alternatives?

[Alex Rice]

On Monday, August 25, 2003, at 07:08  PM, yoy wrote:
> Agreed.
>
> This is not how I expected the launch command to behave either. It may 
> be a
> cut-throat measure to prevent OS's that create multiple instances of 
> an app
> from draining memory.

But what OS behaves like that? Windows 2000 and Mac OS X don't **. I 
don't think earlier versions of Mac OS did?

Linux probably does create multiple instances of an app. AFAIK X 
Windows doesn't limit that kind of thing.

** Although it depends if it's a GUI app or just some command line 
process.

> But there should be (imho) an improvement to launch to
> let it send a document to an already open app.
>
> That's why I was seeking out alternatives.

On OS X there are two alternatives:

1) Use shell() and call the "open" command.  You can do "man open" at 
the terminal to see details.

2) Use applescript
tell application Finder
open "the:path:file"
end tell

Both of these methods should know Mac OS X Launch Services and will 
correctly handle the case where the app is already running but you want 
to open more documents. For Windows- I have no idea maybe this has been 
covered in the list in the past?

BTW I just filed a mozilla bug #449 on the launch command. Apparently 
it doesn't grok application bundles on OS X so you have to workaround 
it with paths like

launch "test2.txt" with 
"/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit"

Alex Rice, Software Developer
Architectural Research Consultants, Inc.
http://ARCplanning.com