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


Wed 27 Jun 2007, 05:00 PM
One of the features I really like in CoexEdit 2.0 (in final testing - not out yet) is the Style sheet support.  FCKeditor has a default style sheet, and if you simply add it as a file resource to your database, CoexEdit will find it and recognize it and use it as well.  Drop it onto the form above your rich text field and Notes will enforce it as well, all without any programming or special settings.  Just point and click.

Copyright © 2007 Genii Software Ltd.

Tue 26 Jun 2007, 08:08 AM
I have to preface this by saying that I love the country and people of Germany, and have visited every year for several years.  While I am not of German heritage, despite my name which is from my wife's family, I feel a strong affection for the country.  Nonetheless, you have to wonder when you read a story such as this one on CNN, which says:
Germany has barred the makers of a movie about a plot to kill Adolf Hitler from filming at German military sites because its star Tom Cruise is a Scientologist, the Defense Ministry said on Monday.

Cruise, also one of the film's producers, is a member of the Church of Scientology which the German government does not recognize as a church. Berlin says it masquerades as a religion to make money, a charge Scientology leaders reject.
Now, I am not a huge fan of either Tom Cruise or Scientology, but it seems the height of irony that the German government would practice both religious discrimination and gratuitous religious labelling in a movie about Adolf Hitler.  The lesson of the Holocaust should not be "don't persecute Jews", but rather "don't persecute people based on their religious beliefs, whether you like those beliefs or not".  While the German government may not consider Scientology a religion, it hardly seems to be their right to decide in a case like this.  Even more amazing is that a government that must remember the yellow stars which Jews were required to wear in Hitler's Germany cannot see that denying involvement with a film studio due to the religious orientation of one of its members is getting pretty close to the same sort of religious labelling.  I really would have thought the German government would have learned its lesson by now.

Copyright © 2007 Genii Software Ltd.

Mon 25 Jun 2007, 12:19 PM
Bob Sutor put a post on his blog called ODF is not open source which elicited a very interesting comment from a gentleman named John Scholes:
I got onto the UK committee slogging its way through the ecma standard on OpenXML by mistake, but I seem to be stuck with it. Echoing what you say above, the thing that irritates me most is that I cannot see any reason for a second ISO/IEC standard in this area. MS claims OpenXML is better for the billions of legacy documents out there in old MS file formats. That would seem to boil down to:
(1) all (or maybe almost all) legacy documents can be satisfactorily converted into OpenXML; and
(2) a substantial (or significant) proportion of legacy documents cannot be satisfactorily converted into ODF.
Both these propositions are essentially questions of fact. So the question is WHERE IS THE DATA? As a bare minimum, can we have a reasonable selection of legacy documents in support of (2) (so that they convert well into OpenXML, but not into ODF).
I recently asked this question on Brian Jones‘ blog and have not yet had any useful answers. Nor have the MS members of the committee come up with anything yet …
As Mr. Scholes points out, we should be able to demonstrate this, so I had an idea.  Let's find documents to prove/disprove whichever contention you want.  I am looking for .doc, .xls and .ppt documents that don't render, or don't render well, in OpenOffice.org or Notes 8 productivity apps or some other ODF editor, or such documents that don't render, or don't render well, in Microsoft Office 2007 or some other OOXML editor (if you can find one).  There have been reports of documents that don't open in Microsoft Office 2007, but I'm tired of reports.  Let's see some examples.  Similarly, there is much talk of the documents that are better supported by OOXML than in ODF, so lets see some.  Any takers?

If you would like, you can send these to  or just send  a link to a download page.  Supporters of either position are equally welcome, as I just want to see the truth in all of this.  If you like, I can then submit any of these examples to the people considering OOXML as a standard, so let me know if you want me to do so.

Copyright © 2007 Genii Software Ltd.

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Thu 21 Jun 2007, 11:22 PM
It is late, so I'll put wait until tomorrow to list features, etc., but Version 3.70 of both the Midas Rich Text LSX and the Midas Rich Text C++ API are available on our website.  Enjoy!





Copyright © 2007 Genii Software Ltd.

Thu 21 Jun 2007, 10:22 AM
Rest in peace: @Midas Formulas

It is always a hard thing for a product developer to discontinue a product, but the @Midas Formulas product has not ever lived up to the popularity of the other two Midas products.  While the Midas Rich Text LSX has been a fundamental part of Notes/Domino development for a decade, and the Midas Rich Text C++ API has become ever more important in both custom development and OEM solutions, the availability of rich text manipulation and querying through formula language has simply not caught on.  Rather than confuse matters and to better concentrate on the products that people do want, I must sadly put the @Midas Formulas product to rest.  Perhaps I'll shed a tear, but since nobody else well, it is better this way.

Copyright © 2007 Genii Software Ltd.

Tue 19 Jun 2007, 10:08 PM
If I had my way, and were not so darned busy (but at least I am doing way cool things), I would be sure to attend one of the Collaboration University events in Kansas City, MO July 9-11 or in London, UK 18-20.  (With apologies to the SNAPPS people, I hardly need say that going to London would be more fun, but the information provided should be equally good in both places.)  From everything I have heard, this was an awesome and incredibly useful conference last year, and this year the SNAPPS people are providing Quickr templates and the product will actually have just been released, so the potential for learning and experiencing and experimenting is just indescribable.

Wow!

Anyway, I won't be going, but if you are (and you should if you can), let me know what you learn.   I will be stuck here in my office, slaving away, so you will know where to find me.  Sigh!

Copyright © 2007 Genii Software Ltd.