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Starting exernal Program to display pdf etc. [message #105553]

Thu, 28 February 2008 16:34

Christian Campo

Messages: 597
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

Hi,

I am looking for a method in Equinox or RCP to start a program i.e. to display a PDF. The only thing so far I found is
the class Program in package org.eclipse.swt.program.

There you could do stuff like

import org.eclipse.swt.program.Program;

.....
Program.launch("c:yourdocs.pdf");
.....

And it will bring up Adobe Reader and display that PDF. However for some I don't want to create a depenency to SWT and
fail to see how starting an external program is related to SWT.

Is there any way outside of SWT and Jface to start an external application.

thanks

christian campo

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Re: Starting exernal Program to display pdf etc. [message #105565 is a reply to message #105553]

Thu, 28 February 2008 18:27

Wayne Beaton

Messages: 553
Registered: December 2017

Senior Member

How about java.lang.Runtime.getRuntime().exec(...)?

It doesn't seem to work on Linux with just a file, but this doesn't work
from the command line either. There's probably some magic that tells a
Linux shell to open a file with the default programme, but I don't know
what it is.

I imagine that this isn't part of CDC-1.x (but could be wrong)

Wayne

On Thu, 2008-02-28 at 17:34 +0100, Christian Campo wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am looking for a method in Equinox or RCP to start a program i.e. to display a PDF. The only thing so far I found is
> the class Program in package org.eclipse.swt.program.
>
> There you could do stuff like
>
> import org.eclipse.swt.program.Program;
>
> ....
> Program.launch("c:yourdocs.pdf");
> ....
>
>
> And it will bring up Adobe Reader and display that PDF. However for some I don't want to create a depenency to SWT and
> fail to see how starting an external program is related to SWT.
>
> Is there any way outside of SWT and Jface to start an external application.
>
>
> thanks
>
> christian campo

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Re: Starting exernal Program to display pdf etc. [message #105660 is a reply to message #105565]

Fri, 29 February 2008 13:31

Christian Campo

Messages: 597
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

Hi Wayne,

Your solution sounded radical simple to me. However running
Program.launch("your.pdf");
works while
Runtime.getRuntime().exec("your.pdf");
does not. Even on Windows XP.

Anyone has an idea ?

thanks
christian

Wayne Beaton schrieb:
> How about java.lang.Runtime.getRuntime().exec(...)?
>
> It doesn't seem to work on Linux with just a file, but this doesn't work
> from the command line either. There's probably some magic that tells a
> Linux shell to open a file with the default programme, but I don't know
> what it is.
>
> I imagine that this isn't part of CDC-1.x (but could be wrong)
>
> Wayne
>
>
> On Thu, 2008-02-28 at 17:34 +0100, Christian Campo wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am looking for a method in Equinox or RCP to start a program i.e. to display a PDF. The only thing so far I found is
>> the class Program in package org.eclipse.swt.program.
>>
>> There you could do stuff like
>>
>> import org.eclipse.swt.program.Program;
>>
>> ....
>> Program.launch("c:yourdocs.pdf");
>> ....
>>
>>
>> And it will bring up Adobe Reader and display that PDF. However for some I don't want to create a depenency to SWT and
>> fail to see how starting an external program is related to SWT.
>>
>> Is there any way outside of SWT and Jface to start an external application.
>>
>>
>> thanks
>>
>> christian campo
>

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Re: Starting exernal Program to display pdf etc. [message #105696 is a reply to message #105660]

Fri, 29 February 2008 17:47

Marcel Austenfeld

Messages: 160
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

You have to call this a bit different
Execute the program with a paramter.

...
...exec("C:/Program Files/Adobe/Acrobat 7.0/Reader/AcroRd32");

...exec("C:/Program Files/Adobe/Acrobat 7.0/Reader/AcroRd32 F:/Example.pdf");

Please read the Java API and this old but very good article for
more information.

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-12-2000/jw-1229-traps. html?page=1

On Linux this will work also. If not, you can execute a native shell which again can execute a command.

I hope this helps

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Re: Starting exernal Program to display pdf etc. [message #105767 is a reply to message #105696]

Sun, 02 March 2008 15:32

Christian Campo

Messages: 597
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

Thanks Marcel,

however that is not quit the solution that I was looking for. Because then I need to query the registry
where the Acrobat Reader is or what other tool the user uses to display PDF.

Program.launch() accepts the datafile like "c:example.pdf" as parameter and let the OS figure out what
program to call to display it.

Runtime cannot do this. However it seems there is no alternative out of SWT for this problem. And I guess
it ended up being in SWT because they have complete different implementations for the different OS systems.

thanks anyway
christian

Marcel schrieb:
> You have to call this a bit different
> Execute the program with a paramter.
>
> ..
> ..exec("C:/Program Files/Adobe/Acrobat 7.0/Reader/AcroRd32");
>
> ..exec("C:/Program Files/Adobe/Acrobat 7.0/Reader/AcroRd32 F:/Example.pdf");
>
> Please read the Java API and this old but very good article for
> more information.
>
> http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-12-2000/jw-1229-traps. html?page=1
>
> On Linux this will work also. If not, you can execute a native shell which again can execute a command.
>
> I hope this helps

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Re: Starting exernal Program to display pdf etc. [message #105791 is a reply to message #105767]

Mon, 03 March 2008 08:46

Marcel Austenfeld

Messages: 160
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

I've forgotten that since Java 1.6 there is a new method to do this identically to the swt class.
I think this could be what you need.

Api :

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/awt/Desktop.html

Example:

import java.awt.Desktop;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
File file;

if (Desktop.isDesktopSupported()) {
try {
file = new File("C:\\yourPdf.pdf");
Desktop desktop = Desktop.getDesktop();
desktop.open(file);
} catch (IOException e) {
}

}

I hope this is the right tip!

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