[python-win32] Launching an application from python

[Tim Golden]

>I am a physicist turned programmer for a current project I'm 
>working on and
>am rather new to python GUI programming. I would like to know if it is
>possible to launch an application like adobe from my 
>application simply by
>programming the commands into a button. I have a few protocols 
>that are in
>pdf format and I would like to pull up the protocol in adobe 
>as an on the
>fly help while calibrating a linear accelerator using my GUI 
>interface. Is
>this possible on windows and how would I go about doing it. I 
>know on a Mac
>I can make os.system calls but am unfamiliar with how to do 
>this on windows.

Assuming that you have Acrobat Reader installed 
(or some equivalent thing) and associated with .pdf
files, the simplest thing is:

<code>
import os
os.startfile (r"c:\temp\blah.pdf")
</code>

os.system will work, but you'll need the full
path to the Acrobat Reader

<code>
import os
ACRORD = r"c:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 5.0\Reader\acrord32.exe"
os.system ('"%s" %s' % (ACRORD, r"c:\temp\blah.pdf"))
</code>

You could -- and I mention this merely for completeness --
use os.startfile to launch the reader without a file. The
slight subtlety is that os.startfile (which uses the ShellExecute
api under the covers) honours AppPath shortcuts which
applications can use to link a name (such as "acrord32") to 
a longer executable path:

<code>
import os
os.startfile ("acrord32")
</code>

TJG


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