Tom:

We were trying the opening of documents from a form with the command:
host(<string>);
beign <string> a string with the full name of the document (p.ej. 'c:\siesta\el_arte_de_dormir.doc')
It works on the MS-DOS shell if we start the sell from the 'Start' Menu of windows (Windows NT 4.0, by the way). The command we issue is
prompt><string>
(ej. prompt>c:\siesta\el_arte_de_dormir.doc )
and the doc. opens

But if we launch it from forms it says that does not understand the command.

Then we tried with the command start, issuing in our form:
host('start' || <string>);
beign <string> a string with the full name of the document (p.ej. host('start c:\siesta\el_arte_de_dormir.doc')

And, the same, forms open a DOS window that complains, quickly dissappears and the document does not get opened. If we open the DOS window from Start menu of Windows and issue the command it works OK.

As last resource, we created a MS-DOS batch program (*.bat) that accepted the document name as parameter. The batch only issued 'start <string>' (being <string> the doc name). And with a little plumbing to handle the case in which the parameter passed had blanks inside (like filename 'This documento.doc') it worked OK FROM FORMS with the instruction:

host('batch_file_Name ' || <string>);

As we did not like that, we pulled other resources and after no little research we could download a package and a dll from Oracle with the function START_DOCUMENT (or sth. like that) that worked OK.

But working that way has the drawback that in the instalation of the deliverable we must copy the dll in the directory [oracle]\bin. We also do not like that, as our customer has strict security measures in client PCs and we should try not to write in that directory, as usually is protected.

So, one solution implies a call to a batch program, which name should not be fully qualified (because the application is supposed to be able to be installed in any directory), and we should get into the annoyance of having a registry variable for that. Other way may be to construct at runtime the file in a known location, but it does not sound very well to me (messy or 'chapucero' as we say in Spain)

The other implies to install a downloaded dll into a possibly protected directory, so the installation get complicated (and although the dll is downloaded from Oracle, we should get it officially from the Oracle support of our customer, which is going to be another pain in the neck).

After so long preliminars the questions are:

1.- Is there any way to use the host command to launch the file without all those problems?

2.-Why do you think calling directly 'start' from the form (with 'host') did not work and calling 'start' through an intermediate
batch program worked?

Thank you.