Subject: Re: NTEmacs & Internet Explorer

From: Richard Pieri <[email-masked]>
Date: 13 Sep 1996 15:09:10 -0400

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

>>>>> "TH" == Tom Horsley <[email-masked]> writes:

TH> I played with START myself, and on NT4.0b2 anyway, I never got START to
TH> always work correctly with all URLs I tried, but the shelex program did
TH> work. Perhaps this is something that varies from win95 to NT, etc.

Here's the deal.  I can get START and SHELEX to work when the URL
includes a file with extension, such as 
<URL:http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/ratinox/index.html>
The browser is invoked with the command line arguments and Does The
Right Thing.  But if a directory is specified, such as
<URL:http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/ratinox/>
neither will work because there is nothing in the registry for such a
URL for Windows to "grab".

-- 
Richard Pieri/Information Services \ When in doubt, cop an attitude. -A cat's
<[email-masked]>   \ guide to life
http://www.dfci.harvard.edu/         \

---

From: [email-masked] (Tom Horsley)
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 96 16:58:34 -0400

>URL for Windows to "grab".

That's wierd. Thats exactly the sort of thing that shelex works on for me
when start fails (according to some arcane documentation I dug up on an MSDN
cdrom once, there is a url.dll file that has something to do with how the
shell extensions decide how to recognize a url - perhaps there are different
versions of this dll on different systems and that's why we all see
different things - I seem to recall that new versions of netscape and msie
came with new versions of this dll).

>Does anyone know if Netscape supports some kind of DDE interface so that we 
>could write something to talk to it?

That's exactly what the ShellExecute() API function (which the shelex
program calls) is supposed to take care of automagically.

--
[email-masked]  or  [email-masked]
Work: Concurrent Computers, 2101 W. Cypress Creek Rd. Ft. Lauderdale FL  33309
The 2 most important political web sites: http://www.vote-smart.org (Project
Vote Smart), and http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/TomHorsley (Me!)

---

From: Richard Pieri <[email-masked]>
Date: 16 Sep 1996 11:12:10 -0400

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Just for the record, I am doing this under Windows95, but I think that
similar applies to some versions of NT.

>>>>> "PB" == Peter Breton <[email-masked]> writes:

PB> Yes. But the "ddeexec" key is the one that sends commands to a
PB> running process. (Specifically for Netscape, it uses the WWW_OpenURL
PB> command).

And there is a ddeexec key:

    HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/http/shell/open/ddeexec/Application	"Netscape"
    HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/http/shell/open/ddeexec/Topic		"WWW_OpenURL"

I have tried several versions of URL.DLL (Plus!, NS2.x, NS3.x), and
regardless of which I use, 'START http://www/' returns an error (cannot
find file 'http://www/') and 'SHELEX http://www/' does nothing.  Also,
Navigator 1.22 does not like the newer versions of URL.DLL.

In parallel news, while the temporary .URL file (Internet Shortcut)
trick works consistantly with the various URL types, I have been
consistantly unable to make the browser run asynchronously if it is
launched by Emacs.  There are no problems if it is already running.
Maybe SHELEX needs to be rewritten to fork() itself and have one fork
launch Netscape while the other terminates, which hypothetically should
satisfy the DOS 'API' for termination of the inferior process.

-- 
Richard Pieri/Information Services \ Variety is the spice of life: one day
<[email-masked]>   \ ignore people, the next day annoy
http://www.dfci.harvard.edu/         \ them. -A cat's guide to life