Launching an app with a document on Windows is a snap -- the first time you do it. If you run a launch command to launch a given app a second time, as documented you will get an error.
So how do we open a second document in the currently-running application instance? One strategy discussed here earlier is to have the app write a temp file, which would be seem by a second instance which could simply let the user know that the app is already running. But the user may legitimately wonder: "So what?" It is a reasonable expectation that double-clicking a document will launch the appropriate app and display the document. It seems less reasonable, certainly less convenient, to tell them they need to switch to the first instance and hunt down the document in an "Open file" menu item. Another approach suggested here is that the calling app kills the current process to open a new instance. But in this app the user probably cares about what's currently open in the first intance, and forcing a quit may cause them to lose data. Plus it just desn't seem polite. The good thing about the project at hand is that both applications are written in MetaCard, so I have control over both ends of the communication. Two options come to mind: 1. Polling I hate even typing that word, but have communication take place via files written to disk would be simple (but very costly to system resources). 2. Sockets I could write an Apple event simulator using sockets, but I can't be sure the user's system will be at all set up with even an IP. Any other suggestions? -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation Developer of WebMerge 2.1: Publish any database on any site ___________________________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com Tel: 323-225-3717 AIM: FourthWorldInc _______________________________________________ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
