[pdftex] Launching programs...

[G. D. Brettschneider]

TB> (...) I could prefer to send a command to execute to the system directly
TB> (xemacs file.tex, e.g., assuming command is on the system path) and I
TB> would like to have such a feature as much OS-independant as possible 
(...)

GDB> In case you're talking about launching programs during *runtime* of the
GDB> pdftex engine, set (...)

TB> no, I'm refering to how put the right code in a PDF using pdftex so that
TB> I can launch a program by clicking somewhere in the PDF.

TB> A typical useful example asked by colleagues is: if you have slides for
TB> a maths course, you may want to open maple to do something at some 
TB> point.

TB> Of course it would be nice if it could be as much system independant as
TB> possible. Under windows, using Launch and just opening a file will
TB> launch the associated program; apparently, this scheme won't work under
TB> linux (mime-types not used?).

TB> Just asking for hints about this kind of things (I noticed that most
TB> pdftex gurus will just get out of acrobat and do things in a command
TB> window on their computer when doing a congress presentation, just
TB> wondering whether there are ways to do something more elegant).

Well, there's at least one case that Acrobat Reader can lauch another
application under Linux out of a PDF: When clicking on an email address
created like this (see samplepdf.tex) ...

  \pdfstartlink height 10pt depth 3pt
    attr {/C 0.9 0 0] /Border [0 0 2] }%
    user {/Subtype /Link /A << /Type /Action /S
      /URI /URI (mailto:pdftex at tug.org) >>}%
  \pdfendlink

... then the email client will be invoked. Maybe that mechanism can be
generalized, or you can let Maple be a faker email client?

Gerolf