As you may know, the Celestia Educational Activity series is based on a set of guided journeys through Celestia space, using a written educational activity document. The document is written in MS Word. It contains many cel:urls that when clicked on, will take you to specific places in Celestia.
The educational activities use almost 100 add-ons. Rather than load them all, each activity uses its own cfg file, which dictates which add-ons are loaded in specific extras folders. Thus, Activity 1 has a custom cfg file that directs Celestia to load only the add-ons for Activity 1.
It works well. To activate that particular cfg file, I use a Windows shortcut to launch Celestia-ED. The shortcut uses a command line, which specifies which cfg file Celestia should reference.
MS Word has the ability to launch another program through the use of an embedded link. My activities all have a hyperlink that points to that customized Windows shortcut. By clicking on that link when the activity document is open, MS Word links to the shortcut, which in turn, launches Celestia-ED using only the add-ons the Activity needs.
Now, here is the problem. Some time ago, after installing some Microsoft updates, I opened an Activity document, clicked on that embedded shortcut, and nothing happened. I immediately system restored, and everything worked again. What was weird was that none of the updates had anything to do with MS Word.
A few weeks later, I installed a video game. The same thing happened. The shortcut in MS Word that launches files, stopped working (the video game had NOTHING to do with MS Word). All the cel:urls in the Activity document continued to work, but I could no longer activate that Windows shortcut. Uninstalling the game failed to fix the problem. I had to again system restore. That fixed it.
Since then, every video game I install results in the same thing. In addition, I have gotten emails from at least five people who have the same problem. They open an educational activity document in MS Word, click on that one hyperlink that is supposed to launch the Windows shortcut, and nothing happens.
Somehow, some registry entry is being changed when video games and other updates are installed on some computers, that blocks MS Word from launching another problem from an embedded hyperlink.
Does anyone have any clue what might be the cause?
Thanks in advance
Frank
What you may want to try instead, is embedding a package with the insert command (Insert / Object / Package)... the package being a command line to invoke Celestia directly, passing it the command string you've defined in the shortcut. This would by-pass the shortcuts. And - rather than appear as a hyperlink in the document, you'll see an icon (Celestia's?) which you double-click on to open and activate.
