[GNC] Open two files at once

[John Morris]

  The command suggested by Robert Kesterson works very well for me. I have been using it in Terminal to keep two sets of books open while I found the time to create an automator script to add to my startup routine. Thank you for that, Robert.

  However, there is one small problem. Appending the ampersand to the command does indeed launch GnuCash in the background, but it does not completely relinquish the foreground. When I run this command in Terminal, the prompt does not come back until I press return. In contrast, when I run other commands with the ampersand, the prompt returns immediately.

  I believe this is important because when i enter the command through Automator or and AppleScript with 

do shell script "/Applications/Gnucash2.app/Contents/MacOS/Gnucash /Users/john/Dropbox/Finances/Finances.gnucash &”

the script does not return until I quit out of GnuCash. That means that I cannot use this command to launch GnuCash as part of my startup routine.

  So, how do I get the command line to come back without any user input?

Thanks,
John


On 24 Apr 2020, at 3:35pm Robert Kesterson wrote:

> OK try this instead.  In your shell do: 
> 
>     /Applications/GnuCash/Contents/MacOS/GnuCash 
> path_to_your_data_file_here.gnucash 
> 
> That should still work for multiple instances too.  I just opened up my 
> Alfred scripts and realized that’s actually how I’m doing it now too 
> (I’m on Mojave as well).   That will hold your terminal open while it 
> runs, btw.  If you want to detach it from the terminal, just end it with 
> an ampersand.  Like so: 
> 
>     /Applications/GnuCash/Contents/MacOS/GnuCash 
> path_to_your_data_file_here.gnucash & 
> 
> That will detach the Gnucash process and give the command prompt back 
> right away.