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Civility in critiquing the ideas of others is no vice. Rudeness in defending your own ideas is no virtue.


Thu 3 Mar 2005, 05:00 PM
In Notes/Domino 6, IBM created a neat new field type called Rich Text Lite, which is quite useful (even though the spelling of "lite" offends my grammatical sensibilities and probably has my librarian grandmother spinning in her grave).  The field both restricts which types of objects can be placed in it, and adds a convenient way to add those objects.  The only problem is, this field type does cause some serious confusion amongst our customers, who want to know if Midas can handle Rich Text Lite fields.

Guess what?  Rich Text Lite fields are just Rich Text fields with a different UI approach.  Virtually all field types are just Text or Text List, Rich Text, Number or Number List, Date/Time or Date/Time Range.  That's right, even fancy Radio Buttons are just Text fields underneath, which is why you can easily access the selected radio button as a text value.

See below for the help popup.  Note the line that says "Rich text lite fields are rich text fields with a helper icon...", and more which simply indicates how the field should be treated from a UI perspective.  It is still a rich text field.

Inline GIF image
So, the long and short of it is, Midas works just fine with Rich Text Lite fields, and the Notes Rich Text classes work as well with Rich Text Lite fields as with they do with Rich Text fields (note that I resisted saying how well or not that was).  So, if you like your Rich Text "Lite", go right ahead.  Of course, if you want your Rich Text "Well Done", you'll need Midas. <grin>

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