R help - May 2007 - shell.exec() on Windows, unexpected behavior

I have Windows XP machines with different software configurations.
My laptop has Adobe Reader 8 and Adobe Acrobat 6.
My desktop has Adobe Reader 8 and does not have Adobe Acrobat.

On both machines, PDF extensions are registered to Adobe Reader 8.0,
and double-clicking a pdf file in Windows Explorer opens Adobe Reader
8.0.

In R-2.5.0, with all Adobe windows closed, the command
  shell.exec('c:/Program Files/R/R-2.5.0/doc/manual/R-admin.pdf')
opens an Adobe window.
On the laptop, it opens Adobe Acrobat 6.0.
On the desktop, it opens Adobe Reader 8.0.

When an Adobe window is aleady open, shell.exec() uses the already
open Adobe window.

Neither machine has any Adobe directories in the shell("PATH").

I am puzzled by shell.exec() opening "Adobe Acrobat" when the file
extension is registered to "Acrobat Reader".  The documentation in
?shell.exec says "Opens the specified file or URL using the
application specified in the Windows file associations."


thanks
Rich

Just a guess but perhaps it opens the file with the association that
existed when R was installed and that association was different from
the current association?  Try re-installing R and see if that changes it.

On 5/11/07, Richard M. Heiberger <rmh at temple.edu>
wrote:
> I have Windows XP machines with different software configurations.
> My laptop has Adobe Reader 8 and Adobe Acrobat 6.
> My desktop has Adobe Reader 8 and does not have Adobe Acrobat.
>
> On both machines, PDF extensions are registered to Adobe Reader 8.0,
> and double-clicking a pdf file in Windows Explorer opens Adobe Reader
> 8.0.
>
> In R-2.5.0, with all Adobe windows closed, the command
>  shell.exec('c:/Program Files/R/R-2.5.0/doc/manual/R-admin.pdf')
> opens an Adobe window.
> On the laptop, it opens Adobe Acrobat 6.0.
> On the desktop, it opens Adobe Reader 8.0.
>
> When an Adobe window is aleady open, shell.exec() uses the already
> open Adobe window.
>
> Neither machine has any Adobe directories in the shell("PATH").
>
> I am puzzled by shell.exec() opening "Adobe Acrobat" when the
file
> extension is registered to "Acrobat Reader".  The documentation
in
> ?shell.exec says "Opens the specified file or URL using the
> application specified in the Windows file associations."
>
>
> thanks
> Rich
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

On 11/05/2007 7:37 PM, Richard M. Heiberger wrote:
> I have Windows XP machines with different software configurations.
> My laptop has Adobe Reader 8 and Adobe Acrobat 6.
> My desktop has Adobe Reader 8 and does not have Adobe Acrobat.
> 
> On both machines, PDF extensions are registered to Adobe Reader 8.0,
> and double-clicking a pdf file in Windows Explorer opens Adobe Reader
> 8.0.
> 
> In R-2.5.0, with all Adobe windows closed, the command
>   shell.exec('c:/Program Files/R/R-2.5.0/doc/manual/R-admin.pdf')
> opens an Adobe window.
> On the laptop, it opens Adobe Acrobat 6.0.
> On the desktop, it opens Adobe Reader 8.0.
> 
> When an Adobe window is aleady open, shell.exec() uses the already
> open Adobe window.
> 
> Neither machine has any Adobe directories in the shell("PATH").
> 
> I am puzzled by shell.exec() opening "Adobe Acrobat" when the
file
> extension is registered to "Acrobat Reader".  The documentation
in
> ?shell.exec says "Opens the specified file or URL using the
> application specified in the Windows file associations."
shell.exec("foo.pdf") does the same thing that "start
foo.pdf" would do
from a Windows command line.  Do you see the same behaviour there?  I 
think this is also usually the same thing as a right click Open does, 
but that may be changeable.

What may be happening is that Acrobat has installed some fancy shell 
extension that doesn't execute an "open" on the file, it does
something
else instead.

Duncan Murdoch

Richard;

Windows file open behaviour is dictated by the complete set of file associations
in the windows registry. You can inspect them in Explorer via tools|folder
options|File types, by finding the file type and looking at the advanced
options.

I would suspect that installing acrobat and the reader in different order on
different machines will have changed the default file open action. You can
override the defaults by specifying your own.

but it will have essentially nothing to do with R... you should see the same
behaviour in explorer.



>>> "Richard M. Heiberger" <rmh at temple.edu>
12/05/2007 00:37:13 >>>
I have Windows XP machines with different software configurations.
My laptop has Adobe Reader 8 and Adobe Acrobat 6.
My desktop has Adobe Reader 8 and does not have Adobe Acrobat.

On both machines, PDF extensions are registered to Adobe Reader 8.0,
and double-clicking a pdf file in Windows Explorer opens Adobe Reader
8.0.

In R-2.5.0, with all Adobe windows closed, the command
  shell.exec('c:/Program Files/R/R-2.5.0/doc/manual/R-admin.pdf')
opens an Adobe window.
On the laptop, it opens Adobe Acrobat 6.0.
On the desktop, it opens Adobe Reader 8.0.

When an Adobe window is aleady open, shell.exec() uses the already
open Adobe window.

Neither machine has any Adobe directories in the shell("PATH").

I am puzzled by shell.exec() opening "Adobe Acrobat" when the file
extension is registered to "Acrobat Reader".  The documentation in
?shell.exec says "Opens the specified file or URL using the
application specified in the Windows file associations."


thanks
Rich

______________________________________________
R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html 
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

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