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CoexEdit enabling the Partner Forum, part 1

Thu 12 May 2005, 04:21 PM



by Ben Langhinrichs
I thought that it might be useful to go through the exercise of adding CoexEdit to a well known, existing database, documenting each step.  I chose the Partner Forum because it is currently a Notes only database, so I thought it would be easier not to work around the web elements already in place.

Now, let me start by saying that I have no desire to see the Partner Forum web enabled, and that what I did will not web enable it.  I worked on a copy of the Partner forum on an internal database.  Here were the steps as I record them:

CoexEdit-enabling the Partner Forum

  1. Made sure that CoexEdit was set up on my server, with FCKEditor installed per the directions in the CoexEdit User manual.
  2. Copied the PFORUM05.NSF to PFORUMCXE.NSF on an internal forum with the name Partner Forum with CoexEdit.
  3. The Main Topic and Response forms both use the Body field as the main rich text field.  Since the FCKEditor with CoexEdit sample database on our website also uses this field, I simply copied the FCKEditorSubform and NotesClientSubform from the FCKEditor with CoexEdit sample into the new Partner Forum with CoexEdit.
  4. I replaced the Body field in the Main Topic and Response forms with a computed subform exactly like that in the Example Form from the CoexEdit sample (I actually just copied it and pasted it in).  The formula is simply: @If(@ClientType = "Notes"; "NotesClientSubform"; "FCKEditorSubform")
  5. In the Main Topic and Response forms, there was no current value for the HTML Head Content formula, so I added the word HTMLBodyContent, which is the computed field on the subform which references FCKEditor.

After this, I created a new document in Notes, then switched to the web.  I used the 1. All Post-2. Author view and viewed the document, which looked fine (it had some different colors, font sizes and images).  Since there was no Edit Document button, I changed the URL from ?OpenDocument to ?EditDocument, and it worked perfectly the first time.  I create a new Main Topic from the web, and that worked as well.  Now, I want to be clear, the web part was ugly as sin, because the form had not been intended for web use, but the rich text editing worked great, both for the new document created on the web and for the document created in Notes.  Here are a couple of partial screen prints:

New Main Topic composed from web (Firefox)

Main topic through FCKEditor

Same Main Topic edited from Notes 6.5.3 after saving from web

Main topic edited by Notes

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