redirecting exec()

[Anon]

I'm using the following within a script to start up the standalone Batik svg viewer:

java -jar ../batik-1.1.1/batik-svgbrowser.jar output/Brainstormgraph.svg

The backtick operators are to start shell execution. The problem is that PHP blocks until the command finishes, which is never!

So I tried redirecting (all of this is running under Windows):
java -jar ../batik-1.1.1/batik-svgbrowser.jar output/Brainstormgraph.svg > temp.txt

Now it not only blocks but Batik doesn't understand the redirect thing.

I did all of the above also using exec() instead of backticks. Same result.

How do I spawn a standalone program from within PHP under Windows?