launch

[Robert Brenstein]

>Richard,
>
>There may be a mechanism to launch a doc to an already open app on OS/X with
>applescript, etc., but no way on W2k.
>
>If anyone on the Mac side remembers CE Software's DiskTop Launch (back in
>the late 80's), this is exactly what I'm trying to accomplish on Windows.
>And it's not possible.
>
>I had my ClawLaunch stack that needed this functionality. It had two list
>fields. One "Apps" had a list of apps that you could add to (storing the
>path to the app in a pref file), scroll to and press enter to launch the
>app.
>
>The other field "Docs" held documents that you could add/associate to an app
>in field "apps", storing it after the app path in the prefs file. Mechanized
>so you could add/remove apps and/or selected docs with ease.
>
>In this way you could either launch the app or scroll to the app and the doc
>field would list the docs you assigned to that app. Pressing tab from app to
>doc field, scrolling to the doc you want and pressing enter would launch
>that app with that doc.
>
>But if the app is already running it doesn't work.
>
>I'm very familiar with launch.
>
>The bane of my existence!
>
>Andy
>

The way I see it, the launch command, as the name implies, should be 
used to launch applications (processes). So it seems logical that if 
the process is already running, it has nothing to do. As docs state 
somewhere, launch is a synonym for

   open process <app> for neither

I think that allowing to (optionally) pass a document to open with 
launch is misleading into believing that launch can be used as a 
generic way to open documents. I guess this should be documented more 
clearly.

What seems to be missing (I thought this was supported in Transcript 
but I do not seem to see it listed as an option) is HyperTalk's

   open file <doc> with <app>

which should open the specified document in the specified application 
regardless whether that application is already running or not.

Robert Brenstein