Re: Bug: can not start a w32 GUI program from Emacs

["Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>]

Lennart Borgman (gmail) wrote:
> I have been trying different ways to start explorer.exe from Emacs on 
> w32. I can not find any way that works. It is a quite annoying bug.
> 
> I suspect this has something to do with the code in w32proc.c that defines
> 
>   start.hStdInput = GetStdHandle (STD_INPUT_HANDLE);
>   start.hStdOutput = GetStdHandle (STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);
>   start.hStdError = GetStdHandle (STD_ERROR_HANDLE);
> 
> This is done even if Emacs thinks it is a GUI app. Is this the problem? 
> Why is this handles set also for GUI programs.


It seems to be more complicated than I thought. Before I could not start 
for example Windows Explorer by

   (call-process "explorer.exe" nil 0 nil ".")
   (call-process "cmd.exe" nil 0 nil "/c" "explorer .")
   (start-process "some name" nil "cmd.exe" "/c" "explorer.exe" ".")

None of them worked. A window was opened, but it was blank or rather 
transparent. And in Task Manager was windows did not have the Explorer icon.

Now, after reboot they all work. Something is however wrong, but what?

This is on Windows XP (all the latest patches applied of course), using 
CVS Emacs a few days old.