Subject: Re: opening .psiword in Win98
From: Niel de Beaudrap (bjde@acs.ucalgary.ca)
Date: Wed Jan 23 2002 - 12:36:43 CST
Nick Gunz wrote:
> Here's an interesting problem. Hope this isn't a repeat, I'm afraid I'm
> new, and I haven't had the time to read everything in the archives.
>
> When I configure Win98 to automatically open psion word files with AbiWord
> it opens the document, but it also opens two blank documents (labeled
> Untitled1 and Untitled2) for no apparent reason.
I very recently had a similar problem with Word and RTF, and even launched
a bug because of it, when it was just something I needed to fix with the
registry (which is how I fiddle with my associations most of the time).
WBhen I had the problem, it wasn't opening documents at all: just blank
windows, as you describe when you are not copying the DDE entries.
My problem was that, in my registry entry for the file type I needed to
make sure the "command-line" parameter %1 was in quotation marks. It is
working for me now.
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?
<snip>
> If you do the same messing in the file type system, except that
> you leave off the DDE settings (ie. you uncheck the "Use DDE" box) you
> again get three windows, except this time *all* of them are blank.
>
> I wonder if anyone could shed some light on this issue?
If you aren't squeamish about editing the registry, I have a potential
solution which is safe and simple. That's how I got AbiWord to work with
the file types I wanted, and it solved the similar problem that I had
above. I don't have time to write it *just* at the moment, but if you are
interested, I will describe it to you. It may not be a complete solution,
but it works for all documents that I have tried it on (not expecting
Excel spreadsheets, equation objects, or tables to be properly
translated).
(Strictly speaking, you probably shouldn't do things in the registry
lightly, but most uninstallation programs leave their program's junk lying
there anyway, so it is hardly a carefully tuned database. Any small and
carefully chosen thing you do in the registry is unlikely to do anything
significantly bad.)
> p.s. this is a great little piece of software. Do you guys take
> suggestions for features, or would that be out of line?
No, this is fine: if you look on the page
[ http://www.abisource.com/contribute/suggest/ ]
it tells you thre process for submitting ideas for enhancements.
That's partly what this list is for, as well.
Niel de Beaudrap
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