[cw-discuss] Executing Native Acrobat Reader from CX Windows Program Passing a Pathname To It.

[Frank S. Bernhardt]

Greetings everyone.

I'm doing a pilot project a customer's site to replace a user's windows 
pc with Linux (isn't this how it always begins?).

She's currently running OpenOffice 1.1.4 for word processing,  Mozilla 
Mail for email,  Adobe Reader for pdf viewing and MultiView 2000 to 
connect to their Unix server via telnet to run back office applications.

This seemed like a no brainer; new pc, install OpenSuSE 10.2, OpenOffice 
2, Thunderbird, Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0.8 native and konsole  with 
vt420 emulation to connect to the server. Simple. And it works. Sort of.

Here's the problem.

One of the applications she uses on the Unix server allows her to look 
up customer invoices; when were they sent, have they been paid, etc. The 
invoices are stored on the server in PDF format so the application shows 
a link to the pdf document that, under MultiView 2000, is click-able and 
starts up Acrobat Reader passing the link to it. The user can then view 
the invoice, print it or email it using her regular email MUA. The 
command that is run looks something like:

file:///AcroRd32.exe I:CUSTOMER#/123456.pdf

Of course the pdf's are on the server and I mount the SAMBA shared 
invoices directory on the windows box as the I: drive.

So, the first problem is that konsole does not have the facility to 
define rules to execute a program based on a certain received string, 
passing that string to the program.

This is where crossover comes in. CX runs MultiView 2000 beautifully. I 
can create the rules just like under windows. It even runs Acrobat 
Reader and displays the pdf.

But...

Under a win98 bottle:

a) I could only run Adobe 5.0.5 which does not have email capability
b) When I print the pdf on the remote Unix server laserjet it prints the 
raw PDF code rather than rendering it properly.

Under a win2000 bottle:

a) I can run Adobe 6 which does have email capability but it wants to 
run the email program that's inside the bottle, not the Linux program 
(Thunderbird).
b) As in the win98 bottle it to prints the pdf on the remote Unix server 
laserjet in raw PDF code rather than rendering it properly.

So...

I managed to get MultiView 2000 to execute the native Acrobat reader by 
using the following command:

file:///Z:/usr/local/Adobe/Acrobat7.0/bin/acroread.exe 000021.pdf

where acroread.exe is a symbolic link to acroread

And the command works. I can view the pdf, email it using the native 
Thunderbird, and it even prints beautifully.

However, I could only get it to work if the pdf file is in:

/home/frank/.cxoffice/win98/drive_c/Windows/profiles/crossover/My Documents

Otherwise the native Acrobat Reader executed can't find the file.

I've tried copying 000021.pdf to "/"  using paths such as /00021.pdf, 
Z:/00021.pdf, etc.

Copying to:

/home/frank/.cxoffice/win98/drive_c

doesn't work either.

Basically the reason it worked with just the file name is because that 
is the last place where Acrobat Reader looked and found the file, ie. 
Acrobat Reader is not able to find the file when given the path through 
the windows command line yet when I run the exact same command line from 
the bash shell, it finds the file.

So, is there anything special I need to do when executing a native Linux 
program from a crossover windows program in order to pass a pathname to 
the program?

Sorry for the length of this email but I thought it would help clarify 
the situation.

Cheers.
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