[Gnumed-devel] Command line FreeDiams

[Jim Busser]

1) I was able, on Mac OS 10.6x, to get FreeDiams to accept

        --patientname

from the command line, but not any of the other parameters (even by 
themselves). Is this yet known to work as intended on other *nix or on Windows? 
If no, I will file as an issue. If not, what is that required form... is it

        <call application> --param1  --param2 --param3 ... ?


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2) for GNUmed reference and maybe also FD reference, the method on Mac is not 
exactly as per its own help. So, whereas one *does* do

        open -a <application name>

the additional Mac shell help on how to pass arguments seems unreliable. The 
Mac -W was unable (by me) to be gotten working, except as seemingly redundant 
(and unclean, with command line continuation) as part of

        open -W FreeDiams.app --args --patientname="James Kirk"

So... except for the part about --patientname being the only argument 
successfully passed (screenshot), the following is what worked:

        open -a FreeDiams.app --args --patientname="James Kirk"


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3) the argument would not work, if passed as "-" (single hyphen) ... it needed 
"--". If that is the required method on all platforms, then we need updating at:

        http://ericmaeker.fr/FreeMedForms/di-manual/ligne_commandes.html



> If you want to call FreeDiams from a console (the
> commandline) you say this:
> 
>       $> freediams
> 
> If you want to tell FreeDiams the name of the patient you say this:
> 
>       $> freediams --patientname="James T. Kirk"
> 
> Now, GNUmed does nothing else :-)
> 
> - it checks whether there is an active patient
> - it retrieves the active name thereof (say, James T. Kirk)
> - it creates a string 'freediams --patientname=' + '"James T. Kirk"'
> - it hands that string to a library function called os.system()
> - that function knows how to start an application
> 
> This is a very coarse interface (for example it does not
> allow for a two-way interaction) but being very high level
> it will work on many platforms. Also, it is entirely
> sufficient for the purpose.
> 
> The next step would be using exchange files:
> 
>       $> freediams --input-file=gnumed2freediams.txt 
> --output-file=freediams2gnumed.txt
> 
> GNUmed would need to create gnumed2freediams.txt and fill it
> with data in a predefined format and start FreeDiams.
> FreeDiams would read it and act according to it. FreeDiams
> would then create output-file and fill it with data
> according to a pre-defined format and quit. GNUmed would
> read it and act according to that ...