Genii Weblog


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


Thu 19 Nov 2015, 12:58 PM
It's been a long time coming, but we have released Version 3.3 of AppsFidelity. Along with numerous rendering tweaks, the main features/fixes are:

  • Better handling of attachments when deleted via icon
  • Font face and size control of attachment icons (important for those using languages which don't render with standard 10pt Arial)
  • Better handling of image sizes (reading from image data when not specified or partially specified, plus detection of errant size data)
  • Native PNG support (while PNG images were displayed, they didn't always make it roundtrip)
  • Non-image based tabbed table and section indicators (because the images were duplicated when forwarded)

As usual with major versions, there may well be minor versions coming soon to wrap up loose ends that didn't make it before code freeze. If you want to try out AppsFidelity 3.3 for yourself, request an evaluation license and we'll get you set up.

Copyright © 2015 Genii Software Ltd.

Fri 13 Nov 2015, 02:12 PM
Back in April of 2008, I wrote a blog post called Help make sure PNG is stored natively in 8.5. The issue then, and still now in Notes 9.0.1, is that while Notes rich text stores and renders PNG graphics perfectly well, when a user actually imports a PNG graphic from the Notes client, it is converted and saved as a JPEG file. Aside from other more minor issues, this means that transparency is lost, thus wrecking many images. As a simple example, consider this logo as it appears above converted to JPG and below stored natively as PNG. 

Inline JPEG image

While it is true that Midas will handle this now (and has since 2008, btw), I am not suggesting you run out and buy Midas for this. I am suggesting the IBM fix the Import. It is easy to do, as I know because it took only a couple of hours to fix the functionality in Midas once I realized that the native format was available. It uses image segments just like the JPG and GIF files do, with the addition of an oddly undocumented but easy to discern CDPNGHEADER record. I have even included the relevant undocumented pieces needed in the same format that the C API uses.

/* Defining undefined ODS elements */
#define SIG_CD_PNGHEADER      (82 | BYTERECORDLENGTH)

#define CDIMAGETYPE_PNG   4

typedef struct
  {
  BSIG  Header;       /* Signature and Length */
  WORD  ImageType;    /* Type of image (e.g., PNG, etc.) */
  DWORD ImageDataSize;    /* Size (in bytes) of the image data */
  DWORD SegCount;     /* Number of CDIMAGESEGMENT records expected to follow */
  DWORD Flags;        /* Flags (currently unused) */
  DWORD Reserved;     /* Reserved for future use */
  } CDPNGHEADER;


Please, IBM, fix the import. Don't make Notes look even more antiquated, clunky and obsolete than many people already think it is. Please!

Copyright © 2015 Genii Software Ltd.

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Wed 11 Nov 2015, 12:03 PM
For a variety of reasons, many companies are moving or have moved to Office 365, and with it the Outlook mail client. But their Notes/Domino infrastructure doesn't disappear or their applications magically migrate with them. For that reason, we have seen a number of our Midas and AppsFidelity customers start to use CoexLinks Fidelity to handle the mail that goes out to Outlook. Not that we care much where it is going, but Outlook (both web and desktop), Gmail, Android and iOS are primary clients for us to test and validate. Both Outlook and Gmail have some serious rendering quirks, so we have had to build in very specific coding to ensure that they display as well as possible (and degrade as little as possible where necessary). An example is shown below.

You can read more on our CoexLinks Fidelity page, or watch a few brief videos on our CoexLinks Fidelity playlist, or try for yourself by requesting a CoexLinks Fidelity evaluation.


Inline JPEG image

Copyright © 2015 Genii Software Ltd.

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