Win32ole & Adobe Acrobat Reader

ruby-talk
1

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

I'm trying to launch the opening of a PDF document from

within ruby, under Windows XP. Adobe Acrobat shows up, but no
document appears. Does anyone see the error, or maybe has
another better (cross-platform) method?

Thanks!

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require 'pdf/writer'
require 'win32ole'

pdf = PDF::Writer.new
pdf.select_font "Times-Roman"
pdf.text "Hello, Ruby.", :font_size => 72, :justification => :center

pdf.save_as("hello.pdf")

acrobat = WIN32OLE.new('AcroExch.App') doc =
WIN32OLE.new('AcroExch.PDDoc')
doc.open("c:\<the_absolute_path_to_the_file>\hello.pdf") acrobat.show

For one thing, don't your backslashes need to be doubled?

"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Space-Bearing Paths\\Are\\Evil.pdf"

Hi,

Hum, unfortunately, it does not seem to help!

···

---------------
Philippe Lang
Attik System

2

Philippe Lang wrote:

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

>> I'm trying to launch the opening of a PDF document from
> within ruby, under Windows XP. Adobe Acrobat shows up, but no
> document appears. Does anyone see the error, or maybe has
> another better (cross-platform) method?

Not cross-platform, but try this:

filename = "myfile.pdf"

`start #{filename}`

If it's hard to see in your browser, I'm using the "backtick" not the
apostrophe, which will induce a system call. I'm assuming Acrobat is
installed as your handler for .pdf files.

Jeff
softiesonrails.com

3

FYI: be careful when using quotes with start: `start "myfile.pdf"`
won't work because when first parameter is quoted it is the title of
the window. so this works:
`start "" "myfile.pdf"`

...sometimes I wonder what did they smoke when they created this...

···

On 11/6/06, Jeff <cohen.jeff@gmail.com> wrote:

filename = "myfile.pdf"

`start #{filename}`