[ltk-user] Ltk + Clisp + win32 hanging at wish startup.

[Charlie Burrows]

Hi all,
I complained a while ago that sometimes wish and clisp fail to
communicate effectively when they are being started. I guess it's some
sort of communication sync problem that causes a race condition. It
only seems to happen when wish takes a little longer to start like if
it's the first time it's being started that day or the machine is
under some load.
Anyway it's still around, if anyone has any input please let me know.
I've seen it happen on a few different machines now. In the mean time
I've found a workaround for it. It's a little involved but it works
quite well.
I'm deploying an application that uses clisp invisibly as far as I
can. It invokes clisp with instructions to load and run my program
code in the shortcut. The windows shortcut properties only allow you
to select minized, normal and maximized so I had to put up with a
clisp window sitting minized in the taskbar.
I then had occasion to write a simple installation script and I found
that you can make windows completely invisible in programatically
created shortcuts. I did this so clisp starts invisibly and suddenly
no more hanging at startup.

The script uses vbs and the windows scripting host. NB the
oLink.WindowStyle="0" line is the one that makes clisp invisible.

Set oLink = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")..CreateShortcut("Shortcut_path.lnk")
oLink.TargetPath = "C:\clisp-2.38\clisp.exe"
oLink.Arguments = " -i C:\run-app.lisp"
oLink.WorkingDirectory =  "C:\clisp-2.38"
oLink.WindowStyle = "0"
oLink.Save

Hope this helps someone.
Charlie