Re: opening .psiword in Win98

Subject: Re: opening .psiword in Win98
From: Niel de Beaudrap (bjde@acs.ucalgary.ca)
Date: Fri Jan 25 2002 - 13:04:22 CST

>> Myself
> Nick Gunz 

----
To all:

There is a small but significant segment of computer users who use
Windows, and who like meddling with file types and perhaps the registry to
get Windows to act like a trained seal (that sometimes makes a mess on the
carpet). This kind of user will be usually very interested in AbiWord, but 
will also fairly consistently run into exactly this problem, because the
solution is simple but obscure.

1. Is there any idea how often this question has occurred in the past?
2. Would I have to pore over the archives to find out how often this
   question has arisen, or is there an easier way?

I will personally keep track of how often this question is asked: if it
becomes significant, I'll suggest it as an entry for the FAQ.
----

>> Out of curiousity, does this happen with any file you try to open? Does
>> it happen, perhaps, only with files which have a space in their name,
>> or something similar that DOS would not have liked in ye oldene dayes,
>> aside from the long extension?
> 
> I checked this out, and I got a very strange result:

(I've snipped out the examples, just leaving the summary of Nick's
experiment)

> ignoring the long extension, DOS type filenames got me two blank pages
> filenames too long for DOS got the same result
> But, and here's the weird part, if you break a filename up with spaces, you 
> get an *extra* blank window for every space.
> Two spaces in a row don't seem to make any difference
> 
> All this seems dependent on the long file extension.  Creating a new file 
> type with the extension .pwd opens only the one window, no matter what the 
> rest of the filename looks like.

Then your problem is probably just what I suspect. If you check the
registry entry for the file extension ".psiword", and investigate the
"open" command, there will be a command-line like entry of the form
[ C:\your\path\to\abiword.exe %1 ]. All you have to do is put the %1 in
quotation marks.

You may have noticed that Windows puts quotation marks areound the names
of programs in the "Target" entry of shortcuts: this is because the 
program name involves long file names or spaces. Part of your problem is
that if the parameter %1 in the registry is not in quotes, every space in
the file name is acting as a separator between two or more filenames
(hence the dependancy of number of windows on the number of spaces in the
filename, except for double-spaces). Of cousre, it won't find the other
files, because their filenames don't match with any files present. As for
the number of windows depending on the long filename (of which the long
extension is a part), that should also be fixed by putting %1 in quotation
marks.

How to fix this (in case you aren't familiar with the registry):

1. Run "regedit" (using the "run" command from the start menu)
2. Open the folder "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT"
3. Look for the folder ".psiword"
4. The folder may contain a "shell" subfolder. If it does not, the
   .psiword entry will probably contain a value called "psiwordfile":
   look for that entry -- it will have the "shell" subfolder.
5. The "shell" subfolder will have an "open" subfolder. Open it.
6. The "open" subfolder will have a "command" subfolder. Click on it.
7. The command item should have a "(Default)" value with the command
   for AbiWord to open a file. Make sure the %1 (and Abiword,'s location, 
   for that matter: this is a good habit to get into) is in quotes.

Viola, problem fixed. Give it a try.

Niel de Beaudrap  

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