[ESS] Bug in ess-swv-PDF on Windows

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> "KevinW" == Kevin Wright <kw.statr at gmail.com>
>>>>>     on Wed, 3 Sep 2008 16:08:18 -0500 writes:

    KevinW> ess-swv-PDF fails on Windows because it tries to launch a bash shell
    KevinW> in order to open a pdf reader.

another proof that your Windows installation would be enhanced
by a quantum leap if you had a bash installed  ;-)

but of course you are right that we should try to behave more
user-friendly here.

    KevinW> Replacing this line:
    KevinW> (shell-command (concat pdfviewer " " namestem ".pdf &")))

    KevinW> with
    KevinW> (w32-shell-execute "open" (concat namestem ".pdf") nil 1))

    KevinW> fixes the problem for me.

    KevinW> Obviously there needs to be some kind of (if-i-am-running-mswindows ()
    KevinW> ()) check here too.

yes (and we know how to do that).
But
o  what is  pdfviewer  (the Emacs variable in that context) 
   for you?
o  Is "open" really guaranteed to work on all versions of M$ Windows?

Thank you, 
Martin