off-topic question: Apple open command and/or apps in /Applications are half-broken now

[Kenneth Wolcott]

Hi;

off-topic question: Apple open command and/or apps in /Applications
are half-broken now

I'm asking the question here because I think that there are lots of
people who might know either the answer to my question and/or can help
me find the answer by describing my problem more accurately/precisely.

  I don't think anything MacPorts did to my Mac via a port
installation caused this problem.

  The problem:

example problem:

/usr/bin/open -F -a /Applications/Reader.app/Contents/MacOS/Reader some_file.pdf

The Reader app comes up to the Dock but does not display the file, and no error.

example problem variant:

/Applications/Reader.app/Contents/MacOS/Reader some_file.pdf

Same result.

This happens with other applications which I routinely use the open
command (in a script) to display files.

Uninstalling the app and re-installing seems to have no effect.

Rebooting does not change the problem behavior.

I experienced this problem just recently.

The problem did not appear right after the last time that I updated
the MacOS via announced patch from Apple.

When I launch Reader from the LaunchPad and use the file->open dialog
to open a file and it works as desired.

When I launch Preview from the Dock I am able to use the file->open
dialog to successfully display a file.

M1, Ventura 13.3.1

So, what did I do to screw up my M1 mac-mini?

How to diagnose the problem?

How to more accurately/precisely describe the problem?

Thankfully I have xpdf from MacPorts which I can invoke in my
script(s) to display my pdf files :-)

Thanks,
Ken Wolcott