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Weblog search results for: "coexistence"

Happy New Year (and a tidbit from Mike)
Mon 1 Jan 2007, 11:06 PM
The blog's been a bit quiet lately (although traffic hasn't slowed much - as Bob Sutor says, "having a photo of an attractive young woman on a blog entry will help drive a lot of traffic"), as I have been caught up in end of year preparations, Christmas holidays and a trip to the Deep South to see my wife's sister and family.  I am trying to gather my thoughts, and have considered writing a "favorite columns" post, but decided against it for now.  I may still do a highlights post, but I think I'll wait a bit.
 
A more important thing to post about is: What next?  After almost four years writing this blog, with many hundreds of posts and even more hundreds of comments, what is it I want to do this year to keep things fresh?  What do you want to see me do?  More posts about rich text?  About coexistence?  About ODF?  Or even about dating advice?  More articles in the Rich Text 101 series?  More updates on products?  More insight into the world of software development?
 
Or should I just ask Mike Midas and Crystal Coex to post more?  It so happens that a few months back, Andrew Pollack noticed how quiet Rocky Oliver's blog had been for several weeks, and asked me to "guest blog".  Not thinking, and because I was way too busy (and lazy), I sent Mike and Crystal over to help out.  Did I mention that I wasn't thinking?  Anyway, the following was written back in September, but somehow Rocky managed to keep it off his blog, so I'll post it here just to show you what I have to deal with in my office.  People complain about bosses, but employees can be worse...
 
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Wage Slaves Unite!
by Mike Midas, Ace Developer (and virtual, remote guest blogger on LotusGeek.com)

It is said that house guests, like fish, start to smell after a few days.  Something certainly smells fishy over at LotusGeek.com, where the elusive Rocky Oliver hasn't been seen for weeks, so our boss sent me and Crystal over to be house guests, to freshen the place up a bit, if you catch my drift.
 
Driving to Georgia from Cleveland is like volunteering to give blood when your half blind Aunt Gertrude is the only dumb sucker they let draw blood at the annual Red Cross blood drive, and her sciatica is acting up.  You might as well just shut your fingers in the car door before taking off, but taking off we were, me with a hangover that a British King would have found sufficient reason for beheading whomever the current British Queen was, and Crystal with an attitude that filled the passenger seat like a hot blooded Latino princess being eaten slowly by a cold blooded South American reptile.  If looks could kill, the looks she was giving me could have been used by the U.S. Marines to clear out all the insurgents east of Euphrates.  Now don't get me wrong, Crystal and I work together just fine, but she doesn't like me, and the only thing I like about her she keeps covered up and out of reach of the likes of me.
 
But when the boss says jump, sometimes you have to put a lid on the snappy rejoinders, shut your eyes to the obvious headaches, smother your resistance like an unwanted pet ferret, and jump.  After all, Rocky has been a friend to the boss for a lot of years, and not just any friend either, but a short, gimpy, motorcycle driving  friend, and you don't find those on every street corner in town, except maybe you do in Georgia, which is why we were heading in that direction.  Ever since Rocky start working for the Man, his time hasn't been his own.  From free wheeling, hard drinking, bike riding independence, he has chucked it all over for the sake of the Suits, and the Suits have paid him back by piling on the work.  So, when a wage slave calls, us fellow wage slaves go forth in sympathy, because our lazy, self made entrepreneurial pain in the ass boss wants to sit back at the office and "manage the business", by which he means pull in the big bucks while he waits for us to get back and do the real work.  Not that I am complaining, mind you.
 
On a long car ride, because as you might have guessed, our boss is too cheap to spring for plane tickets when his yacht needs provisioning for the late season blowouts, a guy's mind tends to wander like the hands of a wayward Uncle when the attractive nieces are about.  With the lack of any good scenery other than the Ice Queen, my mind wandered toward the topic of what the heck we were supposed to do to help Rocky.  After all, Rocky's blog mirrors his skills, but his ego mirrors the Grand Canyon.  When he wrote a book, he called it "The Bible", and if that doesn't say something about a guy, I don't know what does.  So, I don't want to blog about "new @ functions", and I can't let Crystal blog about what she is thinking about in a public forum read by script kiddies, so what should we tell Rocky's readers to calm them down until he finds a free minute hiding out without his laptop in some corporate bathroom while the vampire Suits wander the halls thirsting for his blood, sweat and tears?  I'm guessing they don't want to hear about CoexLinks and Blackberries, although it makes a good story, and Ed Brill has the whole evil empire thing pretty well covered.  We could start some rumors about Hannover, like how it will include an Eclipse plug in for IPO (individual productivity orgasmatron), but they probably wouldn't believe it without some fuzzy screenshots by Maureen.
 
Then it hit me like a wet towel in a steamy locker room in 7th grade.  We are talking about a blog, not a newspaper.  It doesn't really matter what you say, what matters is what you link to.  So, in honor of Rocky and his blog and the whole LotusGeek ethos, I give you Bennie and the Jets by Elton John, but annotated for the blogosphere with lots of links to drive traffic to LotusGeek.com.  Maybe we can even get LotusGeek.com marked as a link farm and banned from the search engines, which would pay the boss back for sending us here.  (Just don't let Crystal see the last two links!) [Note 02/9/2022 - all links removed due to the passing of time and the taking down of blogs]
 
Bennie And The Jets

Music by Elton John
Lyrics by Bernie Taupin
Available on the album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
  
Hey kids, shake it loose together
The spotlight's hitting something
That's been known to change the weather
We'll kill the fatted calf tonight
So stick around
You're gonna hear electric music
Solid walls of sound
 
Say, Candy and Ronnie, have you seen them yet
But they're so spaced out, Bennie and the Jets
Oh but they're weird and they're wonderful
Oh Bennie she's really keen
She's got electric boots a mohair suit
You know I read it in a magazine
Bennie and the Jets
 
Hey kids, plug into the faithless
Maybe they're blinded
But Bennie makes them ageless
We shall survive, let us take ourselves along
Where we fight our parents out in the streets
To find who's right and who's wrong
 
© 1973 Dick James Music Limited 
 
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A bigger boat: when in Rome
Wed 29 Apr 2020, 03:03 PM
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St Augustine famously said, though probably in Latin, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." Yet my previous post, Down to Business - PDF invoices from Notes data with Node, violates that spirit in a fairly major way. Now, the post is still well worth a read and contains a demo that is absolutely relevant, but the script is a bit like reading a sex scene in a book by a priest. You know what is happening, but you're not convinced the author really does.
 
JavaScript isn't written that way. JavaScript doesn't generally operate that way. Sure, it works, but not in a way that would speak to anybody coming from the modern world of JavaScript or Node.js development. It does look a lot like LotusScript, but if we want to widen the range of developers who work with Notes/Domino, we need to reach beyond the relatively few LotusScript developers still out there and appeal to the vastly wider ocean of JavaScript developers. My earlier post, A bigger boat: meeting developers where they are, adds one element of that by allowing parameters to be passed as an object. But it is still fairly old-fashioned synchronous blocking code. Do this. Then do that. While this, do that other. The main JavaScript loop runs in a single thread, so unless you spin off functions, while it is off doing a function, everything waits. That is not good when you should also be processing mouse movements, etc.
 
In short, we need to go asynchronous. We need Promises. Not ordinary promises, like "I will remember to take the trash out on trash day, but JavaScript Promises, which are more like, "I will come back with a result that either resolves this function or rejects it due to error."
 
So, back to the drawing board with Exciton Power. Here is the same basic script I showed in  Down to Business - PDF invoices from Notes data with Node, generating the exact same invoices, but now using the asynchronous (and default) mode for Exciton Power. It some a bit more error trapping and uses slightly different class names (e.g., ExcitonCollection rather than GCollection). All methods are asynchronous and return promises. It is still mostly imperative code and still pseudo-synchronous in that it uses an async / await model familiar to JavaScript developers. It should be fairly clear to hardcore LotusScript developers as well, but let's face it, we old dogs do have to try and learn a few new tricks. Mostly, it does the job without blocking the main event loop, so Node.js can get on with its business, though a more truly asynchronous model will be coming for times when you might handle multiple documents at the same time by spinning off different threads. But for now, at least we can pass as Roman wannabes if not full-fledged Romans. Che buon'idea!
 
Note: I am not a JavaScript expert by any means, and welcome any suggestions about how to improve this and make it feel more natural to JavaScript developers.
 
// *** Initiate a session
const session = require('./build/debug/ExcitonPower');
const { createInvoice } = require("./createInvoice.js");
 
// *** Create a collection and add a view to it
const coll = session.useCollection();
 
let invoiceStarted = false;
 
// *** Cycle through the view, looking for invoices and their line item response documents
coll.addByView({server: "", filePath: "AcroBatsCRM.nsf", viewname: "Customers"}).then(async doccount => {
  console.log("Added "+doccount+" documents from Customers view");
  try {
    let doc = await coll.getFirstDoc({items: "CompanyName,InvNo,Contact,Address,City,State"})
    let docobj;
    if (doc != null) docobj = JSON.parse(doc);
 
    let count = 0;
    let total = 0.0
    let invoiceStarted = false;
    while (doc !== null) {
      if (docobj'@form' == "Invoice") {
        invoice = {InvNo: docobj.InvNo, filename: docobj.CompanyName+" - "+docobj.InvNo+".pdf", shipping: docobj, items: []};
        invoice.subtotal = 0.0;
        invoice.paid = 0.0;
 
        invoiceStarted = true;
        total = 0.0;
        count = 0;
        } 
      else if (docobj'@form' == "Line Item" && invoiceStarted) {
        count++;
        doc = await coll.getDocByUNID({unid: doc, items: "ItemNo,Qty,Price,Total,@DbLookup(\"\":\"\"; \"\":\"AcroBatsPRD.nsf\"; \"Products\"; ItemNo; \"ItemDesc\")=ItemDesc"});
        docobj = JSON.parse(doc);
        invoice.items.push(docobj);
        total += docobj.Total;
        invoice.subtotal = total;
        invoice.paid = 0.0;
        }
 
      if ((doc = await coll.getNextDoc({unid: doc, items: "CompanyName,InvNo,Contact,Address,City,State"})) != null)
        docobj = JSON.parse(doc);
 
      if (doc == null || (invoiceStarted && docobj'@form' != "Line Item")) {
        invoice.subtotal = total;
        invoice.paid = 0.0;
        createInvoice(invoice);
        console.log("Created invoice as "+invoice.filename+" for $"+total); 
        invoiceStarted = false;
        }
      }
    }
  catch(err) {
    console.log("Error: "+err.message);
    }
  }).catch(function(err){console.log("Error: "+err.message)});
 
console.log("Completed!");
 

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Getting the point(s) across with Domino, O365, and Outlook365
Thu 18 Feb 2021, 03:11 PM
When running some tests for a couple of prospective CoexLinks Fidelity customers, I was reminded again of two things.
 
One: Domino email doesn't always render well without help (i.e., CoexLinks Fidelity)
 
Two: Outlook 365 is a weird beast, not matter how much people might want it to be a successor to Notes/Domino.
 
Let's take the following email, written in Notes. 
 
Sent from Notes 11.0.1 client
 
While nested bullet points like this may not be elegant, they are reasonably common in office emails, and were back in 1989 when Lotus Notes 1.0 was released. Notes 1.0 supported nested bullet lists.
 
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Received in Outlook 365 web client (after rendering by Domino)
 
One of the fundamental ideas of nested bullet points is in that first word, "nested", but sadly, the point has been lost due to the Domino rendering. But worse is yet to come.
 
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Received in Outlook 365 desktop client (same email)
 
Having already lost the first fundamental idea of nested bullet points, Outlook manages to screw up the second, as in that second word, "bullet". The bullets are mysteriously missing from the email. Absent nesting, indentation, and bullets, the combination of Domino 11 and Outlook 365 has taken this commonplace corporate staple and completely missed the point(s).
 
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Received in Outlook 365 web client (after rendering by Domino with CoexLinks Fidelity)
 
Fortunately, all is not lost even if you use the unholy combo of Domino and Outlook 365. You just need to add CoexLinks Fidelity to the mix, and badda-bing badda-bang, things get rendered right and displayed right in Office 365 on the web.
 
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Received in Outlook 365 desktop client (same email)
 
... and, of course, in Outlook 365 desktop client. I hope this gets the point(s) across.
 
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If your company uses Notes mail/Verse, even if it just uses them to pass on programmatic emails to Outlook 365 (or Gmail or whatever), CoexLinks Fidelity fixes the problems that both Domino and Exchange have with email. It's that simple. Use the form below to send yourself a few sample emails and see what I mean. (Email address will not be sold or shared or used for anything but a single follow up to offer an evaluation license.)
 

 

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When moving from X to Y, you must know about both X and Y
Mon 15 Mar 2021, 10:12 PM
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While Genii Software is best known for our Notes/Domino related coexistence and migration products, we work in other areas as well. But both inside and outside of Notes/Domino, our core business is really data movement. If you have data in some format or encapsulation, and you need it in some other format or encapsulation, that's what we do. Whether you need the data to move for a moment, for the duration of a project, or forever, we help you move it.
 
The challenge for me is usually not the format or system or structure the data is going to, but the format or system or structure the data is coming from. Often older, outdated systems, though certainly not always, I need to understand as much or more about the source as the destination. Which is why I spend time building new design and new data into things like Infopath Forms that are already facing EOL. Because when that data needs to go elsewhere and fit into some other design (whether Microsoft Power Apps or Salesforce Lightning Apps or whatever), we need to be able to understand the data we are likely to see, and the stuff we are less likely to see, but still will because developers will use anything. we need to be prepared for structures allowed in one system but not in another, especially multi-value anything (e.g., repeating tables), as those tend to be implemented differently in different systems.
 
So, I am creating forms that will never be used by anybody but me, all to be ready for you.

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CoexLinks Migrate 4.60 released
Thu 28 Jan 2021, 12:58 PM
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Today, Genii Software releases version 4.60 of CoexLinks Migrate, our premier mail migration tool for Domino email databases and archives. Along with a wrap up of various fixes for specialized rendering situations required by individual customers, this version features better control of email layout regions, multibyte character sets in group names, and a performance gain of approximately 20% over the previous version.
 
You only get once change to migrate your data. Do it right.
 
Request an evaluation license today, and see for yourself.
 

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REST plus RPC: Do the demo backward
Tue 5 Jan 2021, 05:59 PM
I usually wait until I have successfully completed a demo before I post about the results, but that doesn't match well with we actually face in development. Decades ago, we mocked up the final results using Dan Bricklin's Demo or sketched a "UI Design" on a whiteboard. Now, we have more modern techniques, but it's all basically the same idea. Design the goal before trying to achieve. It's a bit risky for a demo, but I thought I'd step through the entire process with you, including any fits and starts. Hence, this series of posts may not be very polished, but I hope they inform how you could proceed. All of these will use Exciton Boost 4.6, and if you are far more motivated than I expect of anyone, you can request an Exciton Boost evaluation license now and I'll post the db and code snippets so you can follow along. Or even tell me how I could should be doing it. Developers seem to love to do that.
 
I should note that I am not overly fond of Agile development or most other methodologies, and tend to go with whatever others are using. For this process, I'm just going seat-of-my-pants. If a formal methodology is important to you, remember what the philosopher on the deserted island said when faced with a cache of canned goods: "First, assume a can opener."
 
Goal: nested tabbed table that displays and works well in both Notes client and web/mobile browser
I decided to start with something familiar to Notes developers, but recognizable in modern web design as well.. Tabbed reports/interfaces were popular in Notes before they were popular on the web, but are now lots of places. (I don't care if you don't like them. Mutter that quietly to yourself, and then come up with something else you'd rather see and suggest it to me. Perhaps it can be my next demo.)
 
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I won't show the web version, as I haven't developed it yet, but imagine it looks and acts basically the same. Our Bricklin's Demo mockup, our rules.
 
Source data
For the iteration of this demo, I'll use a Notes data source/view, as those are familiar to most of you. It also gives me a chance to use the REST API portion of Exciton Boost. There are 312 orders in the database, and a total of 68 nested tables what with all the cities and states.
 
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Bonus round
For the second iteration, I'm going to use a public REST API which I don't control. Imagine the nested tabbed table as looking kind of like the first. This is a bigger data set, I think, though I admit I haven't even checked carefully. It comes from Open Brewery DB and gives access to a bunch of brew pubs and such in the United States. We'll probably try different parameters as we work, but a sample from Ohio is included below. I don't quite know what I'll do with it, but we can play and you can make suggestions.
 
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=> Request a free Exciton Boost eval in January, and if you later purchase a license. we'll add in four hours of development assistance, a $700 value. <=
 
 
Continuing reading as I develop the solution. My follow up post, REST plus RPC: the right data in the right format, and no more, is now available.
 

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REST plus RPC: the right data in the right format, and no more
Wed 6 Jan 2021, 12:24 PM
Following up on the promise in yesterday's post, REST plus RPC: Do the demo backward, this post describes our first steps in building the nested tabbed table report demo.
 
My wife works in a preschool, and the first lesson for a successful day is: Rest first (well-rested and well-fed kids are happy kids). Most often, we find the same lesson is true when building apps which may require both the REST API and remote procedure calls: REST first (collect the necessary data, and only that data, in the most usable format).
 
Let's examine the data requirements by looking at a snippet of the table and marking up what data we'll need, some item values and other formulas.
 
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For those who have been following along, there are direct parallels  from my earlier post, Data from Domino: nuts and bolts of REST calls. That post is a good place to start when thinking about extracting data from any database using Exciton Boost's REST API. It is also a good post for showing many different ways to call the REST API from different languages. In this post, I'll stick to HTTP for clarity.
 
Task 1: Get list of accessible views
Returns a JSON array of objects, one for each view that is included, implicitly (all views) or explicitly (specified views), in the Exciton configuration db and marked as discoverable. Exciton is strict about data security, so views may be accessible but not discoverable. Views not included are inaccessible and will return a 404 error.
 
GET /ReportIt.nsf/api/boost/views HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/json
 
One of the accessible views is (AllOrdersByState) which has a UNID of 8F4CC3794598B864852586540074DE3F. We could access it using the UNID, but since using view names was added in Exciton Boost 4.6.0, we'll do that instead.
 
Task 2: Get view with columns & metadata
Returns a JSON array of objects, one for each document in the view. Each document includes a link to get the document from the documents collection as well as item values for each view column. Note that there are parameters to page through the view if desired.
 
GET /ReportIt.nsf/api/boost/views/(AllOrdersByState) HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/json
 
We get a JSON array of objects like that below. From this, we know we'll need State, City, and Qty, but won't need anything else.
 
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Task 3: Add selected items to view results 
Going back to the view, the request can include either additional or replacement items for the view columns using an item list via URL or HTTP header. This allows retrieval of any allowed items with the view results, including rendered rich text items.
 
GET /ReportIt.nsf/api/boost/views/(AllOrdersByState)?metadata=false HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/json
X-Items-List: State,City,LastName+", "+FirstName=Saleperson,Unit,Quantity,Color,DeliveryMethod,@Text(Price;"C,")=Price
 
And now we have the data we need in the format we need without the extra baggage. This call is the one REST call that is necessary, though it only returns 20 documents in the view at a time by default. That's a matter for another post as we process the data further
 
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=> Request a free Exciton Boost eval in January, and if you later purchase a license. we'll add in four hours of development assistance, a $700 value. <=
 
 
Continuing reading as I develop the solution. My follow up post, REST plus RPC: building the JavaScript for RPC calls, is now available.

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REST plus RPC: building the JavaScript for RPC calls
Mon 11 Jan 2021, 10:37 AM
Continuing on the development challenge outlined in REST plus RPC: Do the demo backward and started in REST plus RPC: the right data in the right format, and no more, this post describes how we can build up the JavaScript necessary to invoke a batch of remote procedure calls with the JSON-RPC format. There are multiple ways to send HTTP requests and get back data in JavaScript. I find it easy to understand fetch, so that is what I am using, but it should be easy to translate to jQuery or Ajax or whatever. In this case, the devil is not in the details, but in the broad picture.
 
Note: I am not a JavaScript expert. Some of you will know more than I do, or have different ways to accomplish the task. If you'd like, comment and tell me how I could do differently or better.
 
Remote procedure calls with Exciton Boost use JSON-RPC. I did a Quick primer on JSON-RPC a few months ago if you are want to understand it better, but for our purposes, simply understand that we POST a message with a JSON body in a particular format to call procedure calls, and if an id is specified, we get a return value. There may be an array of methods called sequentially. For example, if I want to get the database title for the ReportIt.nsf database in our proposed demo, I would POST the following:
 
{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "method": "db.getTitle",
  "params": null,
  "id": 1
}
 
and would get back the JSON payload
 
{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "result": "Report It!",
    "id": 1
}
 
Now, let's look at a sample JavaScript fetch way of POSTing that. Since I want to show a sequence of calls, I'll also get the default form.
 
const getTitle =  { jsonrpc: "2.0",  
                    method: "db.getTitle",
                    params: null,
                    id: 1
                  };
 
const getForm =   { jsonrpc: "2.0",  
                    method: "db.getDefaultForm",
                    params: null,
                    id: 2
                  };
 
 
function doIt() {
 
var data = [getTitle,getForm];
var stat = 0;
 
fetch('/ReportIt.nsf/api/boost/rpc', {
  method: 'POST', 
  mode: 'same-origin',
  cache: 'no-cache',
  headers: {
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
  },
  body: JSON.stringify(data),
})
.then(response => {stat = response.status; return response.json();})
.then(data => {
if (stat == 200) { 
  document.getElementById("demo").innerHTML = '<h1>'+data[0].result+'</h1>Default form: '+data[1].result;
} else { 
  document.getElementById("demo").innerHTML = '<h1>Status: '+stat+'</h1>'+data[0].error.message;
}});
 
 
};
 
For the crude purposes of this demo, I put a button in HTML that sets the value of a div with id='demo'.
 
<button type="button" style="border-radius: 6px;" onClick="doIt();">Get the database title</button><br>
<p id="demo"></p>
 
When we put this all together on a demo Page element in our database, we get the following. We can build on this for our demo in the next post.
 
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=> Request a free Exciton Boost eval in January, and if you later purchase a license. we'll add in four hours of development assistance, a $700 value. <=
 
 

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Exciton Boost 4.6.0 and development assistance
Tue 5 Jan 2021, 03:24 PM
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Exciton Boost 4.6.0 was released on our website last week, and you can find the release notes online. We expect to release a few small point releases fairly regularly as we work with increasing numbers of customers and add requested features. Security is paramount, so there are likely to be slight tweaks to the Exciton Configuration template as we make sure we are providing the granular access people need without opening any vulnerabilities. 
 
Recent posts such as Data from Domino: nuts and bolts of REST calls have focused more on the REST API, as that has been the most pressing need identified by customers, but we hope to post some samples showing how the REST API can be complemented by and enhanced by use of the RPC (Remote Procedure Calls) API. Our most recent post on the RPC API is RPC - Empowering the server while retrieving to the client, but while interesting, most real-life uses have involved a combination of REST and RPC, so we'll get a couple of demos showing how they work together.
 
In the past, we have worked very hard to focus on product licenses, but as companies have trimmed developers, we have started doing more services in conjuction with our products when requested, We tend to refer to this as "development assistance" rather than consulting, but we are able to handle any level of work required by pulling in long-term colleagues and collaborators as needed or desired. As much or as little as you need. That's it, and no hard sell.
 
=> Request a free Exciton Boost eval in January, and if you later purchase a license. we'll add in four hours of development assistance, a $700 value. <=

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Who died and made you Elvis?
Tue 16 Sep 2003, 04:48 PM
It is an open secret that I am working on a RT -> HTML -> RT solution that should be out in beta soon.  As I get closer to an actual working product, I am faced with many technical hurdles (pah, I spit in the face of technical hurdles) and a few questions that are not technical.  They are social, perhaps even cultural.  These questions have to do with whose world view is "correct".  When the web client and Notes client coexist, should web norms be followed or Notes norms or should each follow its own norms.  This is similar to the question of whether Notes should look the same on the Mac as it does in Windows.  If the Mac UI guidelines are followed, it will be good for Mac users, and confusing for those who UI is different when they visit another machine.  If the Windows UI guidelines are followed, it will have the opposite effect... (read on)
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A layer, a layout region and an embedded control walked into a bar
Tue 19 Dec 2017, 12:21 PM
 
 
 
If you wonder what the joke in that is, you have not tried rendering documents created over the past twenty years by various companies. While it may be easy to dismiss such design elements as legacy artifacts, your company or your client's company may have them in active use or in archives that must be preserved. Whether due to ISO 9000 or other statutory or regulatory requirements, both data and appearance must be preserved. Even if you wanted to replace the design of every database (trust me, you don't) to replicate the look and feel, you'd have to deal with stored forms and rendered documents which have those layout regions, layers and embedded controls inside the rich text fields. This includes emails as well as application documents, etc.
 
IBM has done an amazing job in the Notes client, supporting every ancient design spasm that came along, but even if you love the Notes client, you may not want to remain locked to it forever. A big part of our effort at Genii Software in the past couple of years has been in rendering the unrenderable. Whether you want those ISO 9000 documents displayed through a web front end or stored in a standards-based vault, you need to be able to get an accurate rendering without changing the stored document at all. That is where Midas and AppsFidelity and CoexLinks come in, all of them sharing crucial pieces of a rendering engine built to handle just about anything. Give us a call at +1 216-991-5220 or send us an email at sales@geniisoft.com, and ask how we can help with your thorniest issues, whether you are moving to the cloud, migrating, or just mobile-enabling an app. No risk asking, and you might find a solution which make you a hero, rather than a punch line.

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Collaboration and Coexistence
Sat 19 Jun 2004, 12:29 AM
Those with sharp eyes may notice signs of a collaboration with others related to our coexistence products... (read on)
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CoexLinks needs a new kind of documentation
Wed 22 Mar 2006, 01:53 PM
As I was working on the documentation for CoexLinks 2.6 (which should be available on our website later today, or early tomorrow) over the past several days, I realized that we need to rethink the documentation.  I don't mean rethink whether it is a Notes database or a Word document or a PDF document, but the basic structure of how we organize the growing number of options.  When CoexLinks 1.0 was released in April, 2003, there were only a few options available, but as more companies have started using CoexLinks as part of their coexistence strategy, there have been more nuances, features, desired restrictions, etc. etc.  Mind you, it is still simple to configure and use for the average administrator, but aside from the three options that practically everybody uses, COEXDoclinkType, COEXPrependDocLink, COEXPrependDocLinkText, there are twenty one other possible options, and some can have a fairly major impact on how CoexLinks operates.  That is starting to be enough to confuse people, and it is certainly enough to make it possible that people might start missing out on important functionality which they could use if they knew about it.

But what is the best way to address this?  The twenty four options are documented in the CoexLinks User Manual, but even if somebody were willing to read through them all, it is not always easy to absorb the importance of one or another option, and it is even harder to understand how some interact with each other.

1) Categorization: My first thought was to split the options up into groups or categories, which should certainly be done if nothing else is.  Options such as COEXExcludeHintServer, COEXIncludeHintServer, COEXExcludedLinkText, COEXExcludedDocLinkPreserve and COEXIncludeReplicaID are all closely related, so they should be grouped together, but what of COEXLimitToDB? It could easily be used together with those, but it could also be used for completely different purposes.  Should an option be contained in multiple categories?

2) Scenario Solutions: Mark Ramos, whose Granite Software provides support and also sells CoexLinks along with Genii, suggested scenario based documentation.  It would be possible to describe various scenarios that most companies who use CoexLinks face, and the options they would use to help face that scenario could be explained together.  That seems like a good plan.  I am not sure what to do about the companies who fall between the scenarios or who have overlapping scenarios, but I guess they could recognize themselves in more than one place.  I am working on coming up with scenarios now.
 
3) Wizard configurator:  Mark and I also discussed some sort of a wizard that would help people through the process.  This could be an automated wizard or even just a paper based wizard, but a series of question would help establish which options make sense for your company.  One advantage to this approach is that if a new problem appears, you can go to that problem solving item and find the option, rather than having to re-envision the scenario.  For example: 
 
Issue: Doclinks that are simply pointing back to the e-mail responded to are becoming attachments and confusing people.  They were easy to ignore as doclinks, but not as attachments, and the user can never really access them as they go back to a different user's mailbox.  
 
Solution: Use COEXExcludeHintServer statements to exclude each of your mail servers, as that is where these doclinks will point back.  If you have specific database that should be on the mail servers and render doclinks, use COEXIncludeReplicaID statements to allow those doclinks to be included while others from the mail server is skipped.
 
So, does one of these seem best?  If I do all three, will it just make the documentation bigger and more cumbersome.  Any thoughts?
 
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The low code you already know
Mon 12 Aug 2019, 06:13 PM
Over the next few posts, I hope to show some different features of Notes/Domino which actual customers use, both to suggest things you may not have thought of, and to highlight (after the fold) where our software is important even with these native applications.
 
This first comes from an application a customer developed with the lowest of low code. They created a form and a view to show a visual representation of various gauges and settings. They used a combination of numeric fields driven by @DbLookup and computed color fields.
 
Color fields? Yeah, I don't use them often myself, but if you create them as editable, they allow you to select a color and then show the color. They store the value as an eight character text value with the first two character always 00 and the next six a hex color string as used on the web. So, red would be "00FF0000". Well, these clever people decided to use calculations about how far these gauges were from whatever normal was, and showed the value as a color by shifting up and down the red and green values. Simple formula langauge. No LotusScript even. On a good day, the results might look like this. (I can't show what their actual gauges are measuring, so I pretended it was high water measured at various places.
 
Inline JPEG image
 
 
The bottom color is somehow calculated from the average differential. The field definition looks like this. They just played with the size of the field to make it stand out.
 
Inline JPEG image
 
So, yes, a series of color fields. You could do something similar with a table and computed table cell images, but there are two reasons they didn't. The first is that they would have need a whole slew of images since there are technically 510 possible values (255 for red and 255 for green, though it turns out there are only really 256 rational possibilities). The second is that when the gauges look bad, they email them. Imagine that one day, they saw this. 
 
Inline JPEG image
 
Well, that doesn't look very good, so they just do Action - Forward and send the results and a note to the relevant people. Mind you, there might be other ways, but this is a very low code system that works in Notes right now, and would work even on the iPad or whatever if that is where you wanted to run it. The low code you already know.
 
So, anyway, they email it like this:
 
Inline JPEG image
 
For a while, this worked perfectly. But then one of the people they sent it to went on vacation and forwarded her email.
 
*** NOTE: This is where the Genii Software stuff comes in, so if you just want the ideas above, you can stop reading now.
 
Let's assume that her mail was forwarded to a Gmail account. The results were less than ideal.
 
Inline JPEG image
 
That doesn't exactly communicate the same way, does it? It perhaps makes the point that this isn't an accessible solution, but that's a different topic. Anyway, perhaps the mail could have been forwarded to Outlook365 instead. Then she would have seen:
 
Inline JPEG image
 
Which is no better.  This is where our CoexLinks Fidelity software comes in. Let's send the same email with CoexLinks Fidelity enabled on the server. First, to Gmail:
 
Inline JPEG image 
 
That gets the point across! It even includes the background waves, though they aren't particularly important. So, next to Outlook 365:
 
Inline JPEG image
 
As often happens, Outlook doesn't support even as much as Gmail does, and both support less than Notes/Domino does. But still, the only loss is the background image.
 
The take away is that we have a powerful low code system already in place. But that means you don't know what applications are out there creating content and using email. You don't have to know. And if you (as a system administrator) don't want to hear complaints, you'll get CoexLinks Fidelity to handle whatever weird low code creations there are so you can stay busy with more important stuff.
 
 
 

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BOGO Servers (to celebrate Domino 10)
Thu 20 Sep 2018, 02:57 PM



At Genii Software, we're very excited about Notes/Domino 10 and all the opportunities it presents. We have new features planned for all our server-based products, though some will roll out right away and others will take longer. We aim to take advantage of every new capability, including coordination and integration with Node JS when that is ready (and stable - let's be honest). Truth be told, Domino 10 offers all of us a lot, but doesn't remove the need for the high quality rendering Genii Software is famous for providing. Rendering to MIME, HTML, JSON, CSV, EPUB, and more. Mobile/web/Notes client integration. Much more.

To share our excitement, and to help you prepare to get the most out of Domino 10 when your company gets there, and to minimize the pain until you do, we are offering a Buy One/Get One deal on server licenses for all our major products. Migration-specific and client licenses not included. Buy an AppsFidelity server license, get another at no cost. But three CoexLinks Fidelity server licenses, get three more at no cost. You get the idea.

We are extending this offer through the release of Domino 10 (or really to October 20th, because nobody moves quite that quickly). If you place an order or get an official quote by October 20th, you will get the additional licenses. If you already bought a server license (or three) in September, we will extend the offer to you as well.

Let's celebrate. Let's be ready. Let's hop off the fence and start investing in Domino and its related products again.





Existing customers with negotiated contracts are not eligible for this offer.

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When imitation makes sense
Thu 6 Apr 2017, 11:27 AM
There is an old saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But a corollary i9n the tech world might be imitation is the surest form of interoperability.

A long-standing complaint among Notes users has been that many solutions build integrations for Microsoft Outlook/Exchange, but not for IBM Notes/Domino. While there are myriad reasons, it leaves an ISV supporting Notes/Domino with a challenge. Do we only support those solutions with native Notes/Domino integrations, or do we build out own solution/integration? Both choices are limiting. 

When we built CoexLinks Journal and CoexLinks Migrate, we faced this challenge again. Did we want to restrict our output to third-party platforms that support Notes/Domino, or did we want to build our own archival solution which would distract from our core business? We needed a third choice, which is where imitation comes in. If we could deliver emails in a format that sufficiently mimics Microsoft Exchange Journals, the data warehouses and email vaults that support Microsoft Exchange would automatically support IBM Notes/Domino (and IBM Verse, as a bonus).

So we did that. We render the emails with our exclusive high fidelity rendering engine, package them as EML files and wrap them in an envelope that looks just like a Microsoft Exchange Journal. Now, for our customers who need journaling for compliance, surveillance and analysis or legacy archiving for similar purposes, we can integrate with any of the myriad email vaults or data warehouses that accept Microsoft Exchange. Because the MIME format is standardized, even if the journal envelope isn't, those emails are preserved in a standards-based format that does not require a dedicated Domino storage. Of course, the envelope is just an option, as a customer can also archive or migrate using EML or MBOX format. Regardless of the specific goal, migration or coexistence or archiving or data warehousing, a standards-based solution is more likely to be readable and usablein the future, no matter what happens to the different email platforms.

Why not try CoexLinks Journal or CoexLinks Migrate for your company? Or contact us for further information.



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CoexLinks journaling and migration - expanding the roadmap
Wed 11 Jan 2017, 11:40 AM
For the past 13 years, CoexLinks Fidelity has been very successful at helping companies with diverse email systems coexist. From handling doclinks in the early days to high fidelity rendering in recent years, CoexLinks Fidelity has been used by many of the largest companies in the world, as well as some of the fairly small.

Over the years, we have expanded the core functionality, but have always focused on email as it moves through the Domino system and out, whether "out" means outbound email to clients, customers, family and friends, or "out" means to mobile devices (via Traveler) and web access of internal email (via iNotes).

In 2016, we added capabilities to export email databases to MBOX and EML formats, but only released that capability to select customers. Over the next week or two, we will open this up as a new product, CoexLinks Migrate. Along with the ability to migrate email to files or to a stream, CoexLinks Migrate will allow in-place migration to MIME, thus enabling a Notes/Domino mail database to maintain its fidelity when moved to IBM Verse On-Premises.

We are also adding another product to the family, CoexLinks Journal, which allows third party email vaults to receive high fidelity journaled and encapsulated emails via SMTP, file streams or disk files in near real time, supporting corporate governance, surveillance, compliance and retrieval from a trusted archive.

Details on pricing and licensing will be released shortly, including bundling information for our customers who already use CoexLinks Fidelity.  If you have a need you would like to discuss or want more information, please give us a call at +1 216-991-5220 or send us an email at sales@geniisoft.com. Current customers who are up-to-date on maintenance with CoexLinks Fidelity will receive specific emails about their options for these new products. If you are not a current customer, but would like to try out an evaluation of how CoexLinks Fidelity and its companion products work, fill out an evaluation request.

CoexLinks Product Family Roadmap


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Defect detection in Notes documents
Tue 15 Aug 2017, 12:53 PM

CoexLinks family of products: CoexLinks Fidelity, CoexLinks Migrate and CoexLinks Journal

Very soon, we are releasing a new version of all three of our CoexLinks products, CoexLinks Fidelity, CoexLinks Migrate and CoexLinks Journal. Aside from other features and bug fixes, they will share a new feature called Defect Detection. While the challenge for most document rendering (to MIME in this case) is faithfully reproducing the content of the email and including the envelope information in the desired form, some Notes emails have corruptions and defects which make the job harder.

There are four major defects (and a few smaller ones not worth mentioning):

  • Broken inline images. A variety of corruptions in images including zero-length data, missing image segments and incorrect image type (e.g., a GIF is marked as a JPEG) leave images broken in both the Notes client and the rendered document. We are able to detect and repair or partially repair about 75% of these corrupted images.
  • Compressed attachments with incorrect sizes. These are difficcult to detect because you can open the attachment or save it to disk from the Notes client, so you don't know you have an issue. But since the uncompressed size is incorrect, the document will be truncated and corrupted when emailed or when it is rendered by most tools including the Domino rendering engine. We can fix 100% of these corruptions.
  • Hotspots with invalid ends. In some versions of Notes, URL hotspots and other hotspots inside sections or table cells were left without a closing record. While they appear fine in Notes, they render with either large parts of the Body content missing, or with everything to the end showing as a URL link. We can fix about 95% of these corruptions.
  • Invalid stored image URLs. These corruptions are an artifact of the external MIME to internal MIME rendering, so mostly appear with received MIME emails or forwarded/replied to MIME emails. The fix is fairly simply, so we can fix 100% of these corruptions.

Whether you are sending email to customers, reading your own mail from a mobile or web interface, migrating an entire database or journaling mail to a third party vault, it is better to have defect detection in place so that unusual does not become the irretrievable.

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Announcing CoexLinks Fidelity 3.70 with mobile/web access and Linux
Fri 5 Dec 2014, 02:19 PM
Genii Software is pleased to announce the immediate availability of CoexLinks Fidelity 3.70, the latest enhancement to its highly regarded coexistence and email fidelity software, now available for Windows and Linux. Along with additional performance and rendering improvements, the major feature is the ability to support rendering when Notes emails are read via mobile device through IBM Notes Traveler and via iNotes on the web or browser. These significantly enhance the value of CoexLinks Fidelity within a Notes/Domino infrastructure.

CoexLinks Fidelity 3.70 is available now for all 32-bit and 64-bit Windows platforms running IBM Domino 6.5x/7.x/8.x/8.5.x/9.x, and for all officially supported 32-bit Linux platforms running IBM Domino 8.5.x/9.x. 

Please visit our CoexLinks Fidelity page to find out more about pricing and customer benefits. A fully functional evaluation license is available for free by filling out our on-line evaluation form.

IBM iNotes (browser access)
Access to Notes email via iNotes is useful when you are traveling without a Notes client but need to get your mail. Whether you are viewing through the XPages view on the Notes client or through a browser, your content will appear correctly and function properly.

IBM Notes Traveler (mobile access)
Access to Notes email via Notes Traveler on iOS, Android or Windows mobile devices is critical in today's mobile work force, and now CoexLinks Fidelity provides high quality rendering and protection of data integrity for all of those mobile devices. Whether a phone or a tablet or another device, email is rendered beautifully and functionally. The image below shows how even complex features such as nested tabbed tables are rendered.



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Office 365 for email with Notes and Domino infrastructure
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

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Nice to be on top
Wed 27 Apr 2011, 10:00 AM
I am pleased to see that our CoexLinks coexistence product is still the top-ranked product at MSExchange.org, even if they persist in calling it migration software rather than coexistence software. Click on the image below to get to the page, and if CoexLinks has made a difference for your company, don't hesitate to vote and let us know what your experience has been.  (Psst! Remember that CoexLinks is part of our special offer, but time is running out quickly.)

Just wait until CoexLinks 3.0 comes out and redefines what it means to link email systems together. I hope the competition is prepared when we raise the bar even higher.




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Limited time 2 for 1 deal on Genii server licenses
Wed 20 Apr 2011, 11:30 AM
There are ten days left in April, so I thought I'd make a special offer to celebrate the coming of Spring (I hope), Earth Day, AntiPasto Day (well, Oct 25 is World Pasta Day, so six months later must be...)

Anyway, here's the offer. Buy any of our server licenses (CoexLinks, CoexEdit, Midas Rich Text LSX, Midas C++ API), and get a second of equal or lower value for free.  For example:

  • Buy CoexLinks to support your mail coexistence, and get a second CoexLinks server license free or a CoexEdit server license to support other app coexistence needs.
  • Buy CoexEdit for two servers for the price of one, or get a Midas LSX server license to handle other more specific needs.
  • Buy three Midas Rich Text LSX server licenses and get three Midas C++ API server licenses free at the same time.

Both paid and free license come with a year of support, maintenance and upgrades.  After that, you can choose to get maintenance for one or both based on the original cost (20% of the list price when the license was purchased).  The only restrictions are that you have to mention this offer and pay by credit card, wire transfer or check by the end of April.  Multiple server licenses are allowed, with one free for each one purchased and paid for. Client licenses are not included in this deal.

Now is your chance to get off the fence and buy those licenses you need. But you only have ten days. Hurry and place your order.

Quick recap on what the products do, for those who are not familiar

CoexLinks - Email coexistence for mail routed between IBM Lotus Notes/Domino apps/users and other email platforms. Gives you greater control over doclinks and other fidelity issues.

CoexEdit - Notes/Web editing coexistence allowing you to edit from Notes client and web client, inside or outside of XPages, with excellent fidelity. Social business connections coming soon, and would be available for free as part of upgrade plan/

Midas Rich Text LSX - Multi-purpose rich text LotusScript extension allowing you to do almost anything you want with Notes rich text, and also export to and import from HTML, XHTML, MIME and more with high levels of fidelity and control.

Midas Rich Text C++ API - Same engine as Midas Rich Text LSX, except exposed to C++, C# or any other compiled language that accepts C++ shared libraries.

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Only a few more days for Genii's 2 for 1 server offer
Thu 28 Apr 2011, 06:22 PM
People are still slipping in under the wire in our special 2 for 1 deal for Genii server licenses (see full offer details), but there isn't much time left.  With major releases due out soon for CoexEdit, CoexLinks and the Midas Rich Text products, there couldn't be a better time... but only if you act now.

(Don't you just love it when I sound like a used car salesman? I may have missed my calling.)

Server licenses available for the offer:

CoexLinks - Email coexistence for mail routed between IBM Lotus Notes/Domino apps/users and other email platforms. Gives you greater control over doclinks and other fidelity issues.

CoexEdit - Notes/Web editing coexistence allowing you to edit from Notes client and web client, inside or outside of XPages, with excellent fidelity. Social business connections coming soon, and would be available for free as part of upgrade plan/

Midas Rich Text LSX - Multi-purpose rich text LotusScript extension allowing you to do almost anything you want with Notes rich text, and also export to and import from HTML, XHTML, MIME and more with high levels of fidelity and control.

Midas Rich Text C++ API - Same engine as Midas Rich Text LSX, except exposed to C++, C# or any other compiled language that accepts C++ shared libraries.

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Want to try the iFidelity beta? Dare to render properly
Thu 8 Jan 2009, 10:54 AM
It isn't quite ready to ship, even in beta, but it is getting close.  You may have read about it, heard about it, even dreamed of it, but now you could actually get a chance to give it a try.  Sign up now and as soon as we are ready to grimace, hold our collective breath and send you a beta copy, it will come your way.


Now, I can't promise you that you'll get a very good deal for being an early adopter, and I can't swear that there might be a treat available just for evaluating, but if I weren't the designer, I'd be first to sign up, I can tell you.  As Sarah Palin might say, "You betcha!"  

All you have to lose is a few bytes and seconds directed our way.  All you have to gain is the respect of your customers.  You decide.

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I'll stay on the sidelines, but I am watching this idea
Fri 9 Jan 2009, 10:54 PM
Gregg Eldred posted an idea directly related to my last post.  I'll try to stay out of the comments except to answer questions, here or there, but I will be curious to see what people think.

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Is "Best fit for OS" the best fit for rich text editing?
Wed 13 Apr 2005, 02:28 PM
Recently, on the Notes 6 Gold forum, Torben Sorenson asked about replacing the rich text applet :
When editing a document in web browsers, richtext fields are edited with the standard richtext applet.... we want to create tables, pictures etc. but that can not be done with the standard applet.

Does anyone know of an applet that does can do that?
And how to replace the standard applet with another one?
and I replied with a bit of information about CoexEdit and rich text editors for the web.  Andre Guirard, who works for IBM and answers a great many questions, posed a one liner Ben, do you dislike the "Best fit fit for OS editor"?, and I answered that I had not had a lot of success with it.  But in retrospect, I do think the topic deserves a better response.  I greatly appreciate that IBM is working to address some of the concerns with rich text editing, both in Notes and on the web, and this was clearly an attempt to address that need.  Unfortunately, there are a few problems... (read on)
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The very first resource for a beginning Notes client developer?
Tue 11 Jan 2011, 08:56 AM
This is a follow up to my question yesterday, which got some great answers that I look forward to passing on when I get asked the question myself.  I hope the links in the comments are as useful to others as they are to me. (By the way, don't miss David Leedy's cheat sheet post.)

But I was asked this follow up in an email, and I thought it worth posing.  What is the very first resource for a beginning Notes client developer?

Imagine somebody who knows a lot about some other technology  (not stated which) whose company is moving to Lotus Notes/Domino.  This person is tasked with developing Notes applications more than Domino applications.  Where does that person start to understand the basic architecture, the choices of development tools, etc.?  If that person asked you for the most intro level, what-is-it-and-how-do-I-start resource for Lotus Notes, the equivalent to the links posted for XPages, what might they be?  Assuming they are starting with Notes 8.5.2, should they really start with XPages for the client, or is that mostly useful for coexistence with the web? Any thoughts on that very first resource?

Not as sexy a question, but still important if we want people to actually migrate TO Lotus Notes and not just AWAY FROM Lotus Notes.

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Any requests for Day 2 of my 'CKEditor fixed' series?
Sun 21 Nov 2010, 08:51 PM
On Friday, I showed how CoexEdit handles tabbed tables in the standard 8.5.2 xPages discussion without requiring design changes.  Tabbed tables are one of the Top 10 enhancements people want to see in the CKEditor according to Mary Beth Raven. I figured each business day I would go through and show how CoexEdit can fix CKEditor without touching it in any way. If there are any of those ten you would like to see more about, post a comment. Otherwise, I'll just pick one at random.


  1. Pictures (embedded and stored locally) 
  2. Inline attachments 
  3. Spellcheck
  4. Automatic correction 
  5. Sections 
  6. Tabbed tables (done)  Day 1 post
  7. Double, Single, and ½ spacing 
  8. Live text 
  9. Permanent pen 
  10. Automatic capitalization

Incidentally, I want to be clear that I know I am not exactly fixing CKEditor, but instead fixing its use with this feature in web coexistence. Sometimes, that will also fix CKEditor, but there is a distinction.  Also, there are three items (spellcheck, automatic correction and automatic capitalization) which are editor behaviors, so I'll skip those and put in three other features important to web editing coexistence.

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Any requests for Day 3 of my 'CKEditor fixed' series?
Mon 22 Nov 2010, 09:20 PM
On Friday, I showed how CoexEdit handles tabbed tables in the standard 8.5.2 xPages discussion without requiring design changes.  Stephan Wissell suggested that I tackle inline attachments next, so I posted about how they can be handled better.  Both are from the Top 10 enhancements people want to see in the CKEditor according to Mary Beth Raven. I figured each business day I would go through and show how CoexEdit can fix CKEditor without touching it in any way. If there are any of those ten you would like to see more about, post a comment. Otherwise, I'll just pick one at random.

  1. Pictures (embedded and stored locally) 
  2. Inline attachments (done)  Day 2 post
  3. Spellcheck
  4. Automatic correction 
  5. Sections 
  6. Tabbed tables (done)  Day 1 post
  7. Double, Single, and ½ spacing 
  8. Live text 
  9. Permanent pen 
  10. Automatic capitalization

I know I am not exactly fixing CKEditor, but instead fixing its use with this feature in web coexistence. Sometimes, that will also fix CKEditor, but there is a distinction.  Also, there are four items (spellcheck, automatic correction, Permanent pen and automatic capitalization) which are editor behaviors, so I'll skip those and put in four other features important to web editing coexistence, trying to synch them up with the four features I can't directly fix..

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Grumble grumble web grumble coexistence grumble
Wed 17 Nov 2010, 09:48 AM
I will have a more explicit version, but look at the toolbar from the CKEditor as used in the 8.5.2 Discussion database, or at least those that are strictly text related.  These 8 buttons/inputs are generally grouped as the 5 settings I show below.

Toolbar with text attributes and settings


Of those 5 settings, Font Face, Point Size, Attributes, Text Color and Background Color, how many do you think work consistently and properly when the document is created on the web and then viewed in Notes (not even edited, just viewed)? Which of the 5 do and which don't. Remember now, these are the first 8 items on the toolbar that people will see.

The answer is 2 out of 5. The 3 which do not work properly:

Font Face:  (usually converts to Default Serif, sometimes Default Sans Serif, no matter what font is chosen).

Point Size: virtually always wrong, presumably because it mistakenly assumes pixel size rather than point size, although the specified sizes are clearly point sizes. Thus, 8pt becomes 7pt, 10pt becomes 8pt, and so on.

Background Color: since the background color is not supported in Notes, this setting is ignored.  Causes a real problem when a light text color is paired with a dark background, as the light text color may be invisible in Notes.

A CoexEdit user wrote and asked whether CoexEdit helps.  The answer is that CoexEdit used without any design changes to the database but with AutoRecognizeDiscussion turned on will fix both the Font Face and the Point Size, and will map certain background colors to highlights.

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You don't need CoexLinks (but does the CEO use iNotes?)
Thu 8 Jan 2009, 04:43 PM
By now, you have probably completely dismissed my rants about email rendering.  Chances are good, you don't give a hoot how the email renders.  Your company may not have any customers whom you contact through the Internet, or may even have a policy of sending all e-mail to the Internet as plain text.  Very sensible.  Your company may also not have any DAMO or Outlook clients.  You are a pure IBM Lotus Notes/Domino shop, and proud of it.  CoexLinks 3.0 is not necessary at all.  No way!

Well, not until your CEO opens that nicely formatted, completely internal, completely rich text email from iNotes on her laptop in Waikiki.  No worries, this is a good time to be looking for a new job, anyway.

CoexLinks with better rendering for Notes

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iNotes 8.5 really sings (with one squeaky wrong note)
Fri 9 Jan 2009, 01:41 PM
The iNotes interface for Domino 8.5 has been spiffed up in numerous ways.  It is fast, fun and functional.  The Dojo editor has been integrated in, so that there is finally a real web editor across multiple platforms.  I can almost guarantee that your users will love it.

Almost.

(read on)

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How stable, scalable and reliable is iFidelity?
Wed 20 May 2009, 09:55 AM
How stable, scalable and reliable is iFidelity?


This might seem a difficult question, since iFidelity is only "about to be released".  At best, it has some enthusiastic and satisfied beta testers.   It has no reference customers, no customer base and no track record.  Or at least it doesn't in its current form.  A related question which sheds some light is, why is the first version of iFidelity Version 3.0?  The answer is that iFidelity is really the marriage of two existing products with strong track records, CoexLinks and CoexEdit, which are at Version 2.8 and 2.2 respectively.  Hence, the product which is built on these two bases has been started at 3.0.

CoexLinks is primarily used by companies who have IBM Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange infrastructures that must coexist.  It has been licensed and rolled out to many of the biggest companies in the world since 2003, and is widely acknowledged to be an exceedingly stable, scalable and reliable product.  For example, on MSExchange.org's software migration page, CoexLinks is the top rated product with a score of 4.17 out of 5.  Of course, If you have ever received mail from electronics giant Philips, from USAir, from RSM McGladrey (aka HR Bloch), from GE or many other well known companies, you may have already experienced the stability, scalability and reliability of CoexLinks without knowing it.


Highest rating for CoexLinks



CoexEdit is primarily used product for Notes/web editing coexistence, and it has also been implemented since 2005, and has won a number of awards from IBM and others for its ability to seamlessly convert rich text to HTML and back to rich text.  If you have ever posted an idea on IdeaJam or a comment in the Lotusphere Sessions database, or filled out a form on the webpage of Cici's Pizza or Collier's International or many other well known companies, you may have already experienced the stability, scalability and reliability of Coexedit without knowing it.



Lotus Advisor Editors Choice 2006

2006 Lotus Award - Finalist Best Tool/Utility



Does the marriage of two stable, well recognized products ensure the stability, scalability and reliability of iFidelity?  That is a decision you will have to make for yourself.  At least it ensures that the vendor behind the two products knows how to build these features into a product, and has the track record to ensure that if there are any early glitches, they will be fixed promptly and efficiently.  If that isn't enough for you, you may have to wait a bit as others jump on the bandwagon before you (hopefully not your competitors getting a jump on your business).

Better email.  Better communication.  Better impressions.

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Proposion "gets it" about coexistence
Thu 30 Nov 2006, 05:18 PM
If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred time, companies that want to succeed today need to understand software coexistence.  While IBM and Microsoft and others fight for dominance and talk about "wins" and "win-backs" and that sort of thing, the reality for most companies today is not whether to use one vendor's software or another's, but how to get the software from each vendor to work together.  Domino with Exchange, Notes with Sharepoint, anything with Blackberry Enterprise Server, and on and on.  Since we switched from being a "rich text tools" only company to providing "coexistence solutions", our growth has been phenomenal.  Domino customers use CoexLinks to empower workflow on their Blackberries.  Sharepoint or web customers use CoexEdit to empower rich text editing integration with their Domino backends.  And so on.

Proposion Software

But it sometimes feels like the message isn't getting through to many Notes/Domino ISV's, who want to be one vendor zealots.  But it certainly got through to one company...

(read on)
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Attention Customers, Developers and ISVs going to Das EntwicklerCamp
Mon 15 Jan 2007, 07:29 PM
This worked so well before, I decided to do it again.  This message is addressed to those customers, and to those who make and sell applications and solutions, who will be attending Das EntwicklerCamp 2007 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany in February.  (If you are not attending, and you live or work anywhere near Gelsenkirchen, I suggest you seriously consider this excellent conference.  It promises to provide a lot of value for the cost.)

Dear Customers, Notes/Domino Product Vendors, ISVs and Application Designers,

I am not comfortable spamming people with e-mail messages about our products, but I wanted to invite those who come here of their own accord to consider ways in which our products could enhance your solutions.  To paraphrase BASF's famous marketing slogan... (read on)
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Assorted links to previous tips and posts
Thu 21 Apr 2005, 11:10 AM
On the Notes 4 & 5 Gold Forum, Carl C;. Levin responded to a post of mine:
I followed your link and just wanted to say i thought you wrote that in a manner that was direct, simple , easy and most of all,understandable.  I printed it out.  thank you

Now I'm curious if you have other articles and tidbits that are available..........??
Once I stopped blushing, I responded, and I thought that perhaps some of my current readers would like to see this list as well, so here it is, in no particular order... (read on)
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Collaborative Distribution - CoexLinks
Wed 28 Jul 2004, 11:37 PM
We have just released a press release that starts:
Genii Software, Ltd. and Granite Software, Inc. today announced a distribution agreement for Genii Software's CoexLinks for Lotus Domino.  This agreement enables both software firms to continue their growth strategies and strengthen their respective technology solutions while extending their product sales to existing and new customers.
I wanted to take this opportunity to explain the decision, what it does mean and what it does not, and why we are taking this step... (read on)
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Alan Bell has taken to the scatter graph idea
Wed 1 Sep 2004, 03:53 PM
Alan Bell just posted on his weblog about how he had taken the scatter graph idea and turned it into an on-line demo.  Only difference is, he forces the HTML to be generated rather than creating the layers and letting Domino generate the HTML.  It is a good solution for the web, but not as good for coexistence, which is more my fixation than his.

One nice touch that Alan added was a hotspot with a specific text value so that you could mouse over the dot... (read on)
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The Big "Why?" for e-mail Coexistence
Tue 2 Sep 2003, 10:04 PM
"Why would a company use Outlook for e-mail if they have Lotus Notes loaded on their desktops for applications?"

It has been a few months since we introduced COEX! Links, but I still get asked this question.  As a matter of fact, it was one of the first questions I asked when the product was suggested to me.  Here are some possible answers as I now understand them... (read on)
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Attention Customers, Developers and ISVs going to Das EntwicklerCamp
Wed 20 Feb 2008, 03:20 PM
This worked so well before, I decided to do it again.  This message is addressed to those customers, and to those who make and sell applications and solutions, who will be attending Das EntwicklerCamp 2008 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany in February.  (If you are not attending, and you live or work anywhere near Gelsenkirchen, I suggest you seriously consider this excellent conference.  It promises to provide a lot of value for the cost.)

Dear Customers, Notes/Domino Product Vendors, ISVs and Application Designers,

I am not comfortable spamming people with e-mail messages about our products, but I wanted to invite those who come here of their own accord to consider ways in which our products could enhance your solutions.  To paraphrase BASF's famous marketing slogan...

(read on)

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FYI: Links to the popular Domino Limits pages
Thu 27 Mar 2008, 08:58 AM
One of the most popular pages on this website has nothing to do with rich text, nothing to do with Notes/Exchange coexistence, and nothing to do with Genii Software itself.  This is the Domino Limits page, which lists many different limits, either documented or experimentally found, in Lotus Notes and Domino.  This is a living document, created from a post by Mike Woolsey of Solutions by Design in the Lotus Business Partner forum many years ago.  The living part means that people write in and let me know about new limits or modified information, and I try to keep the whole thing up to date.  Since this was first added to our site back in 2004, it has received thousands of hits every month.  I have pledged to keep the list as current as possible, and it also has the limits to the current supported versions of Lotus Notes/Domino (currently ND6.5/7/8), so you can add it as a resource link to your own website or list of useful links.  The full URL is DominoLimits and will remain that way for the foreseeable future.  Of course, times change and new Nores/Domino versions are released and old ones retired, so there are also two additional pages Domino Limits for R4 and Domino Limits for R5 and ND6.  When ND6.5 is eventually retired, it will likely be moved to the page with R5 and ND6, but I'll make that determination when the time comes.

It may seem that there are not frequent changes, and that is correct, as the limits don't change often, but we are always willing to update information as we find out that some is incorrect or not properly described.  If you have some new entries for us, or some revised information which might help your fellow Notes/Domino developers and administrators, please reply to the Domino Limits blog entry, or write to me at  and I'll be happy to verify what I can and add to or modify the list as appropriate.  Where possible, I indicate the source for the information, so let me know if there is a Help document or other source or if the information was derived by manual efforts.

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Shared toolbars in web based editing
Tue 28 Oct 2008, 10:16 AM
Another day, another Two Minute Demo, this time showing how CoexEdit 2.1 uses shared toolbars in web editing when using our customized FCKeditor 2.6.3.  These tool bars allow you far greater control over the UI of the web editing session, and allow you to conserve space when using multiple rich text fields.

Click on the image below to view the demo:


Shared toolbars in CoexEdit 2.1

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CoexLinks case study profiled by Lotus Advisor
Mon 1 May 2006, 05:20 PM
Mark Ramos of Granite Software pointed out to me that Lotus Advisor has profiled a case study with Interbake Foods using CoexLinks.  (Granite sells CoexLinks for us as well as providing support, so it is identified as "Granite Software CoexLinks", but it is the same product.):
The selection and execution of Granite Software’s CoexLinks went without a hitch. Interbake Foods chose CoexLinks because out-of-the-box it converts document links into a standard file attachment that is accepted by virtually all clients. "CoexLinks offered flexibility, reliability, and scalability and we were able to install the software in minutes," stated Samuels. "Our administrators installed and configured CoexLinks quickly and without the headache of scripting or design." Installation took less than an hour: The Domino administrator placed the CoexLinks dll onto the Domino server, added a few lines into the notes.ini, and restarted the server. After restarting the server, doclinks are automatically converted into industry-standard file attachments.
Head on over to Lotus Advisor and read the whole article.  It does a pretty good job of describing the business reasons why CoexLinks has been such a success.

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A difficult request for CoexEdit
Thu 7 Apr 2005, 07:22 PM
A large customer trying out CoexEdit has made a request that is quite difficult to know how to implement.  Since I haven't anyone else to bounce it off tonight, I thought I would use you all as my sounding board.

Requirement: Pass through HTML with square brackets
The customer has rich text fields that are edited in Notes and then shown and edited on the web, but in the Notes client they want the ability to "pass through" HTML which will be used on the web, but which will remain designated as "pass though HTML".  They currently use the square bracket approach, so that [<b>this</b>] appears like this.  That part would be easy, but when the document is edited on the web and returned, they want it to appear back as [<b>this</b>].  Obviously, they would use it for that sort of pass through, but rather for complex JavaScript, or with applications that automatically generate a link or image with HTML marked off this way.

(read on) for implications and ideas.
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Introducing CoexEdit 1.0
Wed 11 May 2005, 11:23 PM
Genii Software is pleased to announce the release of CoexEdit 1.0, a new product from the makers of the Midas Rich Text LSX, created to enhance rich text editing coexistence between Notes and the web.


Shouldn't Notes icon play nicely with Internet Explorer icon Firefox icon Mozilla icon Netscape icon ?

CoexEdit lets people edit rich text from both a Notes client and a web browser without significant loss of formatting.  Images, attachments, tables and doclinks can all be added, deleted and modified cleanly from either your web editor or your Notes client.  You can even choose your own rich text web editor, using the one which best meets the needs of your organization.  Best of all, there are no agents or scripts or coding required for CoexEdit itself, and we can help you figure out how to easily integrate your chosen rich text web editor with Lotus Notes.

Read the press release or visit the CoexEdit page for more information, or just request a free evaluation license and get started today.
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CoexLinks - Moved but not gone
Mon 11 Oct 2004, 08:27 PM
It may be a little strange for those who have watched CoexLinks grow through the posts on this website but don't hear as much anymore.  The second post I made in this weblog back in May of 2003 was entitled COEX! Links a better idea than I thought , in which I confessed that I hadn't been a believer at first, but was becoming one... (read on)
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Web borders like Notes borders
Tue 11 Nov 2003, 09:50 PM
Notes/Web Coexistence Tip #3

Notes developers confronted with web development are often stymied by the "little things", especially when it comes to GUI or "look and feel" issues.  One frequent complaint is that while a table in Notes has nice thin lines, the same table in a browser has that odd "groove" look.  In other words, in Notes, a table looks like:

Stuff here
and here
and here
and here

but on the web it looks like
Inline GIF image

I have read numerous posts about why this is a reason to use pass-thru HTML, or a whole bunch of complicated CSS.  Just today on the Notes 4&5 Gold forum, a person proposed the following CSS along with turning off the borders in Notes:

TABLE.Linetable TD, TR, TH {
margin-top: 2px; 
margin: 2px; 
padding-top: 2px; 
padding: 2px; 
border-width: 1px; 
border-color: #000000; 
border-style: solid;
}

After proposing this, he says that it doesn't even work properly, since the inner and outer borders are not both thin.

Well, hold on a minute.  You can have your nice thin borders, and you can do it without a whole bunch of CSS.  Simply go to the HTML properties for the table, leaving the borders just as they are in Notes, and add the following text in the style box:

border-collapse: collapse;

This will cause your table to render with those nice thin lines.  If you really want this to be more universal, you can add CSS code that says:

TABLE {
border-collapse: collapse;
}

and all your tables will be rendered this way.

Now, this doesn't address other specialized issues such as borders that are different for different cells, but it is a heck of a lot simpler way to make your web table look like your Notes table, and it leaves the two looking the same, which is a key component of coexistence, or WYSIWYG, for that matter.

By the way, you'll notice if you View Source that I used this tip myself on the first table in this article, so if it doesn't render with nice thin lines in your browser, you must have a browser that doesn't support this (usually a very old browser).
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Foolish inconsistency redux
Fri 23 Nov 2007, 09:36 AM

Blog long enough, and sooner or later your old posts will seem fresh and new again.  What a shame the same is not true of turkey.
- Ben Langhinrichs


This is a modified version of a post I made December 1, 2003.  Sadly, it is as relevant now with Notes/Domino 8 as it was when I was discussing Notes/Domino 6 four years ago.

(read on)
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You know what feels good?
Tue 24 Apr 2007, 09:42 AM
I happened on this today (following a link back from our hits for the day, as I am always intrigued by what brings people to the site).  Read the comment below by Doug Finner, or click on the image below to go to the site itself.  Wow!  That feels good.

Inline JPEG image

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New CoexLinks presentation - looking for feedback
Tue 23 May 2006, 12:32 PM
Mark Ramos and I have been batting back and forth this PowerPoint presentation for a while, but he made a spiffed up version for the Admin 2006 show in Boston.  I then altered the background, and a couple minor things, and added it to our website.  It just takes a couple of minutes to watch, but I wondered what you all think of it.  Too glitzy, or just enough to be interesting?  Should there be more information, or is this enough to make it clear what problem the product solves?  I'd be very interested to hear any feedback.  (Just let it run.  It pauses for a few seconds on the title page, but after that runs automatically.)


Presentation cover page   Watch the presentation (requires PowerPoint or PowerPoint viewer)



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Support by The Turtle Partnership
Thu 8 Jun 2006, 08:31 AM
Turtle Partnership logo
As I have mentioned before, the incredible growth in our coexistence products has led us to start working with The Turtle Partnership, fellow members of the Penumbra Group.  At first, this will mostly be primary support for CoexLinks, but eventually we hope to have the Turtles, as we affectionately refer to them, provide primary support for CoexEdit and Midas and more.  Genii Software will continue to be in charge of secondary support, as well as research and development.  Both Genii Software and Granite Software will continue to market and sell CoexLinks.

Since The Turtle Partnership is based in the United Kingdom, I guess that means we are technically "off-shoring" our support, but I think you will find the support the Turtles provide is top notch.  Also, given that our customers are spread out over 46 countries, a base in Europe seems sensible.

So, here are the new CoexLinks support numbers to use:

From the United States, Canada, Mexico, and South America: +1 (216) 920-4378
From Europe: +44 (0) 208 099 8324

From Asia, Africa and South America: Call either number

E-mail support (often the best way to go anyway): CoexLinks@GeniiSupport.com

Support e-mails can also go to support@geniisoft.com, as before, but will likely be forwarded and responded to by the Turtles.  I will post revised support forum information shortly.
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CoexEdit 1.1 Released
Wed 3 Aug 2005, 12:17 PM
We have released CoexEdit 1.1 at last.  Woo hoo!  Besides adding integration for TinyMCE and adding support for AIX 4.3.3 and above, this version is mostly aimed at solidifying the product and handling better the multitude of different settings and properties available in Lotus Notes/Domino.  For example, Version 1.0 had issues if the Generate HTML for all fields property was set on a form, or if there was too much data in a rich text field when using FCKEditor.  Also, the ability to load local images has been added, and the ability to use that feature has been integrated with the FCKEditor software.

So, if you were expecting major new features, you probably just don't get it yet about CoexEdit.  Take a look at Lisa Discovers CoexEdit for a pictorial explanation with screenshots.  CoexEdit is mostly about quiet coexistence, so most major new features will simply make that coexistence quieter
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Rich text editors integrated with Domino
Thu 9 Dec 2004, 04:40 PM
There seems to be no shortage of rich text editors available for the web.  Many are based on the Microsoft DHTML editor, while others are Java based or require a plug in for the web client.  I even started a list of them last year, to which I need to add one I heard about today called Fckeditor, believe it or not.

... (read on)
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Tips from BP102 - Advanced Lotus Notes/Web Coexistence
Thu 29 Jan 2004, 08:54 AM
For those who attended my session, thank you!  You were a wonderful audience.  The links below should get you to the most specific tips, with some information on how to use them.  I will post the slides here soon, but an only slightly different set are on the Lotusphere on-line site.  There are a number of additional coexistence tips I am working on and will post over the next few weeks, so be sure to come back and check our weblog occasionally to see what I've added.  In the not too distant future, I also plan to add a page dedicated to Notes/Web Coexistence, to make it easier for you to find things such as the rich text editors, weblog articles from others, etc. that I have collected.

  1. Keywords that go somewhere
  2. Anchors aweigh
  3. Foolish inconsistency (doclink symbols on web)
  4. Text popups on the web

For those who noticed the "lost tip", #3, it was about getting thin Notes-like borders on the web, and it turns out to be somewhat inconsistent between browsers, even between IE5.5 and IE6, so I am making sure I have the full story before re-posting.
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My session time and location
Wed 21 Jan 2004, 10:50 AM
I have had a few inquiries about when and where my Lotusphere session would be this year.  I'll be presenting in the Swan Pelican room on Tuesday at 2:30pm.  I'd be very happy to see any customers or readers or just the curious, and I think you'll take away a fair amount of valuable information.  The topic is BP102 Advanced Lotus Notes/Web Coexistence, and you can read about it here, or in our handy-dandy PDA compatible  Lotusphere 2004 Sessions DB, which has already been downloaded over 1000 times.
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Intuition or Market Research
Fri 30 May 2003, 08:05 AM
One of the challenging parts of being an independent software vendor is deciding which projects or products to invest in, time wise, money wise and energy wise.  Some vendors do a lot of market research, formal or otherwise, to decide what the market will bear.  I do that by following many forums, answering lots and lots of questions both related and unrelated to our products, and trying to understand the pulse of the market.

On the other hand, I also spend a lot of time developing technology that nobody is asking for directly, or that skirts the edge of anything anyone wants.  The SmartRefs technology we just introduced is one example.  While many people use the earlier automatic contextual cross-reference links, the idea of "doing stuff" to random bits of the rich text is not immediately obvious to people.  My intuition tells me that this is powerful technology, but it is still a "gut feel" gamble rather than meeting a proven need.  Only time will tell how well it succeeds.

Another example that I am working on right now is HTML -> RT -> HTML technology in a plug in.  HTML generation was another gut feel, and one that has paid off handsomely.  Many, many customers of all sizes and descriptions are using our HTML generation and MIME mail sending ability, which was an offshoot.  Now, I am working away furiously at improving the HTML importing side, so that we can introduce a coexistence tool that allows Notes client apps and web client apps to share rich text even if the web side chooses to use one of the fancy rich text editing tools for the web, such as eWebEditPro.  Currently, sharing rich text between the web and Notes client means losing almost all the richness, but I intend to have a plug in answer for that so almost any authoring tool will coexist more smoothly.  There is more obvious demand for this than for SmartRefs, but it is still a largely unproven market.  My intuition says it will be a big one, but one of my closest ISV friends thinks it is a non-starter.  Who is right?  We'll see.
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Give me your tired, your poor, your ugly
Wed 14 Jan 2009, 01:50 PM
As I polish up the last few pre-beta details with iFidelity, I wanted to ask a favor of anybody out there.  Do you have an example of an outbound email that you know renders badly, an example of an inbound email that is horrible when forwarded, or just anything sufficiently complex that you wonder how iFidelity might handle it?  If you create a blank database (with no design) and just paste in the mail messages that you would like tested, the send to , I'll test them out and send them back rendered by iFidelity (once I scramble around fixing any oddities I may find, so don't expect it back in minutes).  Obviously, keep out any confidential information, but give me a chance to put iFidelity through its paces.  Feel free to play "gotcha", as I know some of you enjoy that.

As an example, I went to the Notes client help (through the db), and forwarded a message using Action - Forward this Topic.  While it rendered well in most ways, it turned out the horizontal rule was not colored correctly by iFidelity if it didn't use one of the basic sixteen colors.  Fortunately, that was an easy bug to fix.  I'd like to see if your mail has easy (or even difficult) rendering issues to fix.  Thanks in advance (and there might just be a discount for the product for those who send samples)!

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Have you voted for CoexLinks?
Wed 24 Oct 2007, 10:41 AM
I have mentioned it before, but MSExchange.org has CoexLinks listed on its Migration page, and allows people to vote or comment on their favorite products.  I wish CoexLinks  were listed on a Coexistence page, but there isn't one.  In any case, but I am greatly honored and profoundly grateful that you have given CoexLinks such a high vote score (see below), and it is actually in second place in the list!  So, first, let me say Thank You! to those who have voted for us, and encourage anybody else who has been successful in solving their Notes/Domino <-> Outlook/Exchange coexistence issues with CoexLinks to vote for CoexLInks now, or even comment on your experience.  Thank you in advance!

MSExchange.org migration page
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Introducing Crystal Coex
Sun 30 Jan 2005, 11:46 PM
Crystal CoexYou may have already met our newest guest blogger, Crystal, in Size Matters, but I didn't dare leave Crystal feeling slighted, so here is a more formal introduction.  Crystal helps customers, especially big customers with our coexistence products, although she doesn't favor much coexistence with anybody (well, nobody she has met yet)... (read on)






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Is CoexEdit a "Coex" product or a "Midas" product?
Thu 17 Mar 2005, 08:57 PM
I was asked this question today, and it is an interesting one.  From a product positioning standpoint, CoexEdit is a coexistence product.  It will be sold more like CoexLinks, will probably be handled by resellers in a way that Midas is not, and it is much more of a solution than a tool, which makes it more like CoexLinks than like any of our Midas Rich Text products.

On the other hand, it handles HTML to rich text and rich text to HTML using the Midas Rich Text engine, and is suited to certain tasks that Midas has been suited for.  In addition, while it is a coexistence product, the coexistence is between Notes and the web, or essentially Domino, while CoexLinks is about coexistence between Notes/Domino and non-Notes/Domino.

In short, I'm not sure yet.  What do you think?

(Of course, we could just wait and see whether Crystal Coex or Mike Midas writes about it)
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Guess I missed my two year anniversary of writing this blog
Fri 27 May 2005, 04:29 PM
I'm not too into the anniverary thing, but I have been writing this since May 2003, and am still very glad I started it.  I was a bit hesitant at first, since a lot of people start blogs, but not a lot keep them up, and I didn't really want to sputter out.  A few stats do seem relevant:


Stats as of last night
559 posts
Over 23 posts per month
322 posts with responses
1275 total responses
2.28 responses per post
3.96 responses per post with responses
Over 400 different people responding to at least one post

I gave two post ratios, because many posts are not particularly meant for responses, but the ones that have had responses have had almost four each.  Seems pretty good to me.
I will do a separate post soon about favorite posts (who can forget Hypothetical Carrots), but here is one I couldn't bear to pass up.


Interesting foreshadowing
One of the first posts I made in May 2003 was called Intuition or Market Research.  It is worth re-reading in total, but here is a somewhat condensed version:
One of the challenging parts of being an independent software vendor is deciding which projects or products to invest in, time wise, money wise and energy wise.  Some vendors do a lot of market research, formal or otherwise, to decide what the market will bear.
...
On the other hand, I also spend a lot of time developing technology that nobody is asking for directly, or that skirts the edge of anything anyone wants.
...
Another example that I am working on right now is HTML -> RT -> HTML technology in a plug in.  HTML generation was another gut feel, and one that has paid off handsomely.  Many, many customers of all sizes and descriptions are using our HTML generation and MIME mail sending ability, which was an offshoot.  Now, I am working away furiously at improving the HTML importing side, so that we can introduce a coexistence tool that allows Notes client apps and web client apps to share rich text even if the web side chooses to use one of the fancy rich text editing tools for the web, such as eWebEditPro.  Currently, sharing rich text between the web and Notes client means losing almost all the richness, but I intend to have a plug in answer for that so almost any authoring tool will coexist more smoothly.
...
My intuition says it will be a big one, but one of my closest ISV friends thinks it is a non-starter.  Who is right?  We'll see.Two years later, and a mere two weeks ago, we released CoexEdit, to a rush of evaluators and generally good feedback.  You have watched the whole process live through this blog, and over the next few months, you should get the answer along with me about who is right.
Thanks to all my readers and contributors!  I hope to do this for a long time to come, but you all make it worth doing at all.
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Why not use Exchange Connector instead of CoexLinks
Wed 25 Feb 2004, 10:07 AM
I'll write this up as a position paper, but I just had to get it off my chest...

When people evaluate CoexLinks, they often ask the question, "Why can't we just use the Exchange Connector?  It does the same thing."

There are three answers, and I am never sure which to give first.  Here are the three answers, and you tell me which is most compelling:

Exchange Connector is Not Supported
This may seem a pretty blanket assertion, but the following three Microsoft technotes pretty much describe the story:

XFOR: Exchange 5.5 SP2 Notes Connector Does Not Currently Support Lotus Notes R5 Server (documents the lack of support for  Exchange 5.5 SP2, the most common configuration of Exchange 5.5. and Notes/Domino R5.x)

XCON: Microsoft Support Policy for Exchange Server Coexistence with and Migration from Lotus Notes/Domino 6.x  (documents the lack of support for  Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 with Notes/Domino R6.x)

XFOR: Lotus Notes Client Versions That Are Tested with the Exchange Notes Connector (documents that even in an unsupported, use at your own risk configuration, the last version of Notes they even tried out was Notes 5.0.10.  Since ND6 isn't supported at all as described above, this is not likely to change.)

Exchange Connector is Architecturally Weak Solution
This is also a fairly broad assertion, but it is not one Microsoft would likely argue with.  They built the Exchange Connector as a way to bridge the gap while people moved to Exchange.  Since few people are moving that way these days, they have abandoned the effort.  In any case, here are just a few of the myriad design problems:

1) Requires an R4 client running on an Exchange server.  The Exchange Connector requires an R4 client, yup R4 (see this technote and search for "4.62") running on the Exchange server.  So, an unsupported version of Notes running as client software on a server is the basis for this product.  There are many by-products of this poor design, not the least is this technote:

XFOR: Exchange Notes Connector Does Not Send HTML (documents the issue that if any user has their mail set to go out as MIME, the e-mails will simply be discarded, which is not surprising, since R4 didn't support MIME in messages)

2) Single point of failure.  The Exchange Connector must be set up so that all mail travels through one connector on a single Exchange server.  There is no provision for load balancing, different routing based on MIME e-mails, or anything else that would allow a larger organization, or a smaller one with diverse needs, to split up the mail.  If the rickety Exchange 5.5 server (only version supported) fails, all your mail routing stops.

3) Too many links in on document cause crashes .  The Exchange Connector must be set up so that all mail travels through one connector on a single Exchange server.  There is no provision for load balancing, different routing based on MIME e-mails, or anything else that would allow a larger organization, or a smaller one with diverse needs, to split up the mail.  If the rickety Exchange 5.5 server (only version supported) fails, all your mail routing stops.

Besides this, take a look at Microsoft technotes documenting many other issues: 253712, 245569, 181742, 253029, etc.

Exchange Connector Provides Very Little Flexibility Compared to CoexLinks
The Exchange Connector solves, or tries rather badly to solve, I should say, one problem in one way.  When it works correctly, it replaces doclinks with NDL attachments.  It does not accurately mark where the original link was, so if there were multiple links, a person may click on the wrong NDL link.  It does not provide disclaimer support so that recipients may not know why there is an indication that there is a link, but there is only an attachment.  It does not provide the ability to create Notes URL links.  It does not provide the ability to create Web URL links in case the Notes client is not available and a web interface has been added.  It does not allow limitation of the number of attachments for mail systems that limit attachments.

I could go on and on, but I'll save it for the white paper.  Let me know if you want to see more, and I'll happily provide an early copy before it is posted.
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To follow Ed's lead, but more leisurely
Fri 23 Jan 2004, 09:14 PM
Since Ed mentioned me, I figured I should reciprocate.  Ed posted his Lotusphere schedule, and, between you and me, I am exhausted just reading it.  So here is my somewhat more leisurely plan for Lotusphere: (read on)
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Have you personally used CoexEdit? Are you sure?
Thu 10 Apr 2008, 10:03 AM
I got this question today, "How hard is it to use CoexEdit?"  Ironically, I happened to have noticed this person's name on a couple of ideas posted on IdeaJam recently, so my answer was, "What do you think?  I see you've already used it"  Needless to say, he was surprised.  Now, I will grant you that the toolbar used on IdeaJam does not take advantage of many of the available features, but using CoexEdit is as simple as editing.  If you have ever posted an idea on IdeaJam, you have used CoexEdit.  If you have posted a comment or question in the Lotusphere Sessions db this year, you have used CoexEdit.  In fact, there are a number of other companies using CoexEdit on public websites, so you may have used it multiple places.  How would you even know?  You just edit, use the intuitive icons in the toolbar to create tables or links or add graphics, and the content is saved, the content looks like it is supposed to and everything just works.  Or, you edit the way you normally do from a Notes client, and then save, and all that content looks the same on the web and also, just works.  Like most really good software, CoexEdit gets out of the way of your doing what you do best.  It is not that it isn't doing anything, it is that it is doing it well enough that you don't have to think about it.

So, are you still so sure you haven't used CoexEdit? Maybe the better question is, why doesn't your company get CoexEdit and see if your employees and customers won't notice either?

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Wiki links in Notes and on the web with CoexEdit
Mon 27 Oct 2008, 03:13 PM
Time for another Two Minute Demo, this time showing "wiki links" in both the Notes client and the web browser.  For our purposes, a wiki link is a link to either an existing document or a document which we might want to create.  All that it takes is putting the name of the document (usually the Subject, but any field will work) in double parentheses, like ((Some document)).  When saved, this will become a link hotspot to that document.  If the document does not exist, the link will become an action hotspot to create the document.  Wiki links have proven to be very popular and powerful, as they allow the content provider to add links without menu commands.  To further facilitate that, CoexEdit also offers quick link shortcuts as part of the wiki link logic, so ((http://www.ibm.com|IBM)) becomes IBM.  Watch the final slide in the demo for a few other options.

Click on the image below to view the demo:


Wiki links in CoexEdit

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Final testing in progress - evaluation requests being accepted
Mon 2 May 2005, 08:41 AM
Face it - you need CoexEditLast night, system testing was going cleanly enough that I opened up the evaluations for our new CoexEdit, and we have already had some evaluation requests come in.  If you would like to be one of the first on your block to evaluate CoexEdit and see what rich text editing coexistence could and should be like, fill out a CoexEdit evaluation request, and as soon as it is released, you will get your evaluation license and be ready to give it a whirl.

Fear not!












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Attention Notes/Domino Product Vendors, ISVs and Resellers
Thu 13 Jan 2005, 08:45 PM
Just this once, I want to address this message specifically to a subset of the readers of this blog...

Dear Notes/Domino Product Vendors, ISVs, Application Designers and Resellers,

I am not comfortable spamming people with e-mail messages about our products, even though a number of companies do just that in this pressured pre-Lotusphere season, but I wanted to invite those who come here of their own accord to consider ways in which our products could enhance your solutions.  To paraphrase BASF's famous marketing slogan:

We don't make many of the Notes/Domino applications you buy.
  We make many of the Notes/Domino applications you buy better.

That's right, it isn't just developers adding cool whiz bang dynamic tables who buy our products.  It is also vendors like you, including those in over ten countries around the world, who design, build, enhance, resell and support... (read on)
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Logos and graphics and icons - oh my!
Thu 3 Jun 2004, 11:44 PM
As usual, I am foolishly, and probably incompetently, trying to create my own logos and graphics for COEX! Links and possibly other COEX products.  Thus far:
      

HELP!... (read on)
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Better search engines
Mon 5 Jan 2004, 02:12 PM
There is an interesting article on next generation search engines on the CNN site today.  I tried out Vivisimo.com to see how it compared to Google, and I must say I like the results.  



If I search for "rich text" on Google, I get 6,910,000 results!  Nearly seven million hits, which means that the vast majority is useless to me and essentially inaccessible in ten page increments... (read on)
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Full updated version of BP102 session slides
Mon 2 Feb 2004, 10:27 PM
I played with the idea of turning this into a PDF, but for the sake of getting it out there sooner rather than later, here is the full PRZ (freelance version) of my presentation from Lotusphere, BP102 Advanced Lotus Notes/Web Coexistence.  If I later create a PDF, I'll add it to the LS2004_BP102 page and update this blog entry.
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Text popups on web and Notes client
Thu 15 Jan 2004, 02:21 PM
Notes/Web Coexistence Tip #5

I hope to see many of you at Lotusphere, and especially at my session on Advanced Lotus Notes/Web Coexistence on Tuesday at 2:30pm in the Swan Pelican.  (Download the Lotusphere 2004 Sessions DB I created and you can even mark it down and keep track of which other sessions you'll have to find in repeats.) 

I have really enjoyed writing some technical content on other topics besides rich text, so I thought I'd throw another one at you to whet your appetite for the Lotusphere session... (read on about text popups that work on both the Notes client and the web)
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What does the term "coexistence" mean to Microsoft (and probably IBM)?
Wed 1 Feb 2006, 02:50 PM
I had long suspected this, but I didn't think to see it in writing.  On a page on the Microsoft Technet site called IBM Lotus Notes or Novell GroupWise Migration and Coexistence: Frequently Asked Questions, the following questions are asked, with the answer starting off this way:

Inline GIF image

To be fair, IBM would probably define coexistence in almost identical terms, except with the migration happening in the opposite direction.  Just a note then, to both Microsoft and IBM, you might try thinking about coexistence from your customers' point of view.  It isn't necessarily a synonym for "migration" to them, and at the very least, you should be aware that your bias is showing.
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Attention Customers, Developers and ISVs going to Das EntwicklerCamp
Sun 30 Jan 2005, 09:48 PM
This worked so well for Lotusphere 2005, I decided to do it again.  This message is addressed to those customers, and to those who make and sell applications and solutions, who will be attending Das EntwicklerCamp 2005 in Dortmund, Germany in February.  (If you are not attending, and you live or work anywhere near Dortmund, I suggest you seriously consider this excellent conference.  It promises to provide a lot of value for the cost.)

Dear Customers, Notes/Domino Product Vendors, ISVs and Application Designers,

I am not comfortable spamming people with e-mail messages about our products, but I wanted to invite those who come here of their own accord to consider ways in which our products could enhance your solutions... (read on)
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Customizing the FCKEditor toolbar
Mon 6 Jun 2005, 05:03 PM
As a large CoexEdit customer is starting its plan to roll out the product, the question has come up of how to customize the toolbar that comes with FCKEditor, the rich text editor they have chosen as the web side of the Notes/Web coexistence (they are using Notes 6 as the Notes side).  While this obviously isn't part of CoexEdit itself, I imagine this will be a common request, so I thought I'd outline how it works.  In a future post, I'll describe the same kind of customization with TinMCE and Xina/htmlArea.

Static configuration for FCKEditor is mostly stored in a file called fckconfig.js which is directly under the FCKEditor directory... (read on)
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Updating Domino Limits page
Wed 27 Oct 2004, 10:00 AM
One of the most popular pages on this website has nothing to do with rich text; nothing to do with Notes/Exchange coexistence; and nothing to do with Genii Software itself.  This is the Domino Limits page, which lists many different limits, either documented or experimentally found, in Lotus Notes and Domino.  This is a living document, created from a post by Mike Woolsey of Solutions by Design in the Lotus Business Partner forum... (read on)
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Anchors aweigh
Sun 2 Nov 2003, 11:31 PM
Notes/Web Coexistence Tip #2

It is so much fun writing technical content on something other than rich text, I'll think I'll throw in another one from my Advanced Notes/Web Coexistence session at the recent UK Admin-Developer Conference.  Let me know if you think I should keep posting these coexistence tips or retreat back to my rich text cage. <grin>

Back in Notes R4.6, Lotus added a great new feature, anchor links, with the kind of irritating limitation that seems to plague Lotus when adding great new features.  An anchor link lets you go to a specific spot in a document, not just to the document.  Anchors are used extensively on the web as a way to point at another part of the same document (table of contents) or to a specific point on a complex page.  These were destined to be a big hit in the Notes world, right?

Wrong!  As a matter of fact, it is not uncommon to find that developers don't even know they exist, and users, who should be able to use these easily, are not taught to use them at all.  Why, because the product management at Lotus did not think hard about how anchors could really be used, and made two crucial mistakes... (read on)
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All Lotusphere session slides and samples
Tue 10 Feb 2004, 10:19 AM
OK, it is a very ambitious title, but I am collecting any of the Lotusphere session slides and samples links I can.  For those who used or know about the Lotusphere 2004 Sessions DB, I know of a friend with all the slides who is putting them together with that database.  He said he would post it on his website, and as soon as he does (tomorrow, I hope), I'll let you know here.  There are a number of the IBM presentations in the Sandbox. In addition, a number of Business Partners and others have updated versions and some examples on their own sites.  Here is a short list (please respond with any additional which you know about): (read on)
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Branching out: REST, gRPC, and other gory details you can (mostly) ignore
Mon 20 Jan 2020, 03:57 PM
REST vs gRPC with logos
 
 
 
Posts in this series: 
 
In this post, I'll dive briefly into a few gory details. While these are critical to me as an ISV, for many Notes/Domino developers, they are concepts you only need to understand roughly. 
 
Traditional NRPC: Communication between tightly coupled client and server
In traditional Notes development, you have been spared most of the worry  about how the Notes client and Domino server communicate. They just do. We don't think about how running a script or editing a document in a server database from your Notes client. It just works. But the way it works is the Notes remote procedure call, aka NRPC. To quote the documentation:
Domino® servers offer many different services. The foundation for communication between Notes® workstations and Domino servers or between two Domino servers is the Notes remote procedure call (NRPC) service.
Because the Notes client and Domino server are tightly coupled, we don't need to worry about how NRPC works. It just works. And since both the Notes client and Domino server share a lot of the same executable code, they can balance who does what and only communicate when absolutely necessary.
 
Problem: Communication between decoupled client and server
Opening up NRPC to other systems is problematic. It can be done via the APIs, but essentially requires that the Notes or Domino code is installed on that server, so you are really still having Notes code communicate with Domino code via NRPC. But what about when we'd like a web page on a non-Domino server to communicate with Domino? Or we want a Notes client or Domino server to communicate with SalesForce or other software run by other people not interested in installing Notes/Domino. We need other protocols. 
 
HTTP - a transfer mechanism
Primarily, this means HTTP. Even a classic Domino web page communicating with Domino uses HTTP rather than NRPC, as does XPages. That is why you can sit in an Internet cafe in Brussels and work on a page served up by your Domino server in Montréal. You are using HTTP rather than NRPC. HTTP is stateless, meaning that every call is independent. A session may be maintained on the server, but every call has to prove itself part of the session. That can prove a heavy load. 
 
Solutions chosen by HCL: REST and gRPC
 
REST - a protocol for web services
In 2000, Roy Fielding wrote his doctoral dissertation on REST (Representational State Transfer), a concept he defined. The idea was that companies could create a REST API and defined efficient and easy ways to interact with their system over the existing HTTP system. If they wanted other people to use their system, as many companies did, they made it a public REST API. Instead of submitting an entire web page and having the server process it, the developer could use web services to send commands and receive back information to act on. This allowed web services when enabled programming in a far more interactional way. 
 
While there are variants, most REST APIs use JSON as the payload and HTTP as the delivery mechanism. There are many public unsecured REST APIs, but if authentication and security are needed, most use OAuth, a public open-source authentication system that can use your existing authentication with Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc. OAuth 2.0 is the current state-of-the-art, and Domino provides that for authentication.
 
In my last blog post, I mentioned Domino Access Services. That is the REST API that first IBM and now HCL have provided to allow accessing Domino data from a web service. Using a simple URL (which is usually a GET in HTTP), you can retrieve the contents of a Domino view or document as a JSON string which can then be parsed and used in various languages. Lots more can be done, but I'll talk about that in a different blog post. But for a simple example, here is a URL endpoint (as they are often called) to access the views and folders in a Domino database on my very local server:
 
 
and when I use that on my database that has Domino Access Services and has the database setting below
 
Domino Access Service setting
 
then I get a response in JSON with each view or folder (aka collection) defined. You'll notice it also gives the endpoint URL to get to the contents of each collection
 
Sample JSON for collections in Domino Access Services
 
 
gRPC - a transfer mechanism and protocol
While the REST API over HTTP was sufficient for most uses, some uses require greater efficiency. Since many of those uses involve Google, they created their own new-but-old take on remote procedure calls for highly efficient APIs. They realized that the worst part of RPCs was the stuff they were passing was so damn proprietary and included internal data structures and so forth, but JSON wasn't fast enough and XML was worse. So, they made the whole thing open source and used protocol buffers, and then defined an easy way to create and handle those protocol buffers in various languages.
 
When HCL started work on a Node JS project, they could have used a REST API, but decided it would be more scalable to go with gRPC. Mind you, you can install and use domino-db and never know it uses gRPC, but if you want a sense of how well it works, look in the dominodb/package/src directory:
 
Directory of JavaScript files
 
What you find is JavaScript files. No C/C++/Java. Just simple JavaScript files that passes gRPC messages up to the Domino server where the Proton server addin is ready and waiting for messages. It handles all the nasty stuff, and passes back other messages. This means that you can use the Server and Database and Document classes on any lightweight platform that allows Node JS (and therefore, JavaScript). 
 
The protocol buffers are defined in .proto files. Here is an example I built for one of our forthcoming products:
 
Sample .proto file for sort by row method
 
By comparison, that same method would have a JSON schema something like this if it were in a REST API:
 
Sample JSON schema for sort by row method
 
Again, you may not need to know a ton about these, but the terms will be used. If you can't get enough of this stuff and want a more general discussion of the different web services technologies, start with Kristopher Sandoval's article, When to Use What: REST, GraphQL, Webhooks, & gRPC.
 

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What email fidelity really means
Tue 22 Aug 2017, 11:41 AM
I got a few questions from people at MWLUG about what CoexLinks Fidelity is, and what exactly 'email fidelity' might look like. Rather than just talk, you can try for yourself. Note: our newer CoexLinks Migrate and CoexLinks Journal products use the same rendering engine internally. If you submit your email address below, you will get twelve messages to the email address you used. Six will be sent using the normal Domino 9.0.1 email engine, then the same six will be sent rendered by CoexLinks Fidelity. Compare and decide whether your company and your clients would be well served with email fidelity, or whether your migration would be safer with it. If you want to try CoexLinks Fidelity for yourself, just fill out an evaluation request, and we'll get you set up. To find out about the other two products, click on the links for each product above.
 
No, we won't spam you endlessly if you give us your email. It is only used for this demo and a quick follow up afterwards to make sure your questions have been answered.
 


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Changing names midstream
Mon 6 Jan 2014, 03:14 PM
Sometimes you make decisions that later turn out to be short-sighted. One of those decisions was leaving the names of the CoexLinks software DLLs the same for 32-bit and 64-bit IBM Domino versions. The decision seemed to make sense because we had already decided to leave the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Midas LSX the same, but there are different reasons there.

With the Midas LSX, you need to use a line such as the following in your script:

UseLSX "*lsxrtc"

which then loads the LSX into memory. If this were different for your 32-bit Notes client (and Designer) than for your 64-bit server, you would have a problem. IBM screwed up by not giving a different prefix for 32-bit Windows and 64-bit Windows, probably because the people who understood that logic had left already. But that's another story.

For CoexLinks 3.1, there will be four DLL names instead of the current one. For 32-bit Domino under Windows, there will be ncoex32.dll (CoexLinks Classic) and nCoexLinks32.dll (CoexLink Fidelity). For 64-bit Domino under Windows, there will be ncoex64.dll (CoexLinks Classic) and nCoexLinks64.dll (CoexLink Fidelity). Since there is only a 32-bit version of CoexLinks Clipper, it will stay as cxclippr.dll. This should go a long way toward eliminating the issue of people installing 64-bit software on 32-bit Domino and vice-versa.

For those people who have some trouble changing the NOTES.INI files, the file can still be renamed to ncoex.dll (CoexLinks Classic) or nCoexLinks.dll (CoexLinks Fidelity). The license file will stay as CoexLinks.lic for all three components.

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Genii Software Roadmap
Wed 19 Mar 2014, 04:51 PM
I thought it might be worth laying out a roadmap for where I see Genii Software and its products going in the future. While these are mostly continuations of current directions, not everybody is aware of the different overlapping features. So, here goes.

Lane 1: Companies leaving Notes behind or moving part of their infrastructures away from IBM
This lane is often seen as "migration", but frequently turns into "coexistence". We support both things. This lane is likely to be quite active.

CoexLinks Fidelity will allow email infrastructure to move to Microsoft or Google or anyone else, while allowing high fidelity email to be sent to the new mail system with total control of doclink and with a built in Message Store for emails with Notes-specific functionality. CoexLinks Fidelity serves both those in the process of migrating and those coexisting between IBM Notes/Domino and other software infrastructures.

Midas LSX allows the high quality export of both mail and other data to a variety of formats supported outside of Notes/Domino, whether in other IBM software or software from many other companies including Google, Microsoft, Oracle and many, many others. Hands-off exports will be increasingly used so that no developers are needed for this process.

Product X will provide a more seamless migration process for email, utilizing both the Midas engine and additional functionality. Details not currently public.


Lane 2: Companies staying with Notes but without significant developer resources
This lane reflects the reality of many companies today, not only in Notes but in many technologies. Some companies have only a skeleton developer staff, while others have no developers, but their infrastructure has been mostly paid for and they are not interested in moving. We are finding more and more ways to support these companies, and see this as an area with significant growth potential, both for Genii Software and for other flexible software and consulting companies. This is the middle lane because those in both Lane 1 and Lane 3 may drift this direction.

CoexLinks Fidelity will allow a company with an existing Notes/Domino email infrastructure to improve the quality of their customer-facing emails. It may also improve the quality of email accessed through the iNotes web interface. Since it can be deployed/configured without developers needed, it allows a company to do more/better with their existing infrastructure.

CoexEdit will offer enhanced functionality to both XPages and classic web interfaces, whether they are Notes/Web combined or not. The interface will be primarily non-developer focused, with no changes to templates or database designs required.

Midas LSX already offers many templates for processing/importing/exporting and managing rich text resources, but will increasingly offer a line of designer-free templates which are data driven and can be used by either administrators or users as is. The scope of such templates will not be limited to rich text, just as the Midas LSX is less tied to rich text.

Midas C++ API will increasingly be used to provide add-in functions either through a menu interface or a data driven interface so that specific functionalities will be available "built in" rather than through a database. This will be increasingly important for server applications. Some of these may be labeled as separate products, but will still fall into this product family.


Lane 3: Companies moving to Notes or with significant Notes developer resources
There are still companies moving to Notes/Domino or maintaining and growing their Notes/Domino infrastructures. While this may not be a growth area, our products provide the ability to do more and get better returns on the Notes/Domino infrastructure, even if IBM does not significantly invest in new features.

CoexEdit will offer enhanced functionality to both XPages and classic web interfaces, whether they are Notes/Web combined or not. The interface will be primarily non-developer focused, with no changes to templates or database designs required.

Midas LSX offers many templates for processing/importing/exporting and managing rich text resources, but will increasingly offer templates which work beyond rich text. Developers can build in this functionality to make enterprise-class applications that go well beyond what IBM envisions in Notes/Domino. Hooks are being added to provide more functionality inside XPages, but also in non-XPages applications. Also, data import functionality allows customers to bring data in from other platforms using the powerful Midas fidelity engine.

Midas C++ API is available and being enhanced to allow sophisticated developers to build Midas power inside their own software, or offer extended functionality with hooks to the Midas functions optionally available for those who "buy up".


Exit Lane A: Products built for other platforms
No details at this point, but we may release one or more products for other platforms that may or may not be integrated with our Notes/Domino products.

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I am not an IBM champion
Thu 12 Sep 2013, 10:21 AM
I understand that it is an honor for many to be named an IBM champion, and I cheer their efforts and recognition. I understand that my products have enhanced IBM's offerings in many ways, and my coexistence products have even made it possible for a lot of IBM customers to continue using IBM's offerings. Maybe that would be enough for some to consider me an IBM champion.

But I am not. I am a champion for my customers, regardless of what technologies they choose. I help people moving to IBM offerings, help people moving from IBM offerings and help people who are using IBM offerings. While all my products have something to do with IBM's offerings, that is simply a matter of what I have had time and inclination to create. It may change. It may not.

I sometimes recommend IBM's products. I sometimes recommend their competitors. IBM sometimes recommends my products. Their competitors sometimes recommend my products. It is all business. Raw, naked capitalism, as Ray Ozzie described it at Lotusphere one year. 

I am not an IBM champion nor an IBM detractor, and I do not particularly expect IBM to be a Genii Software champion or detractor either. We coexist, usually happily. That is enough.
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Mini-Lessons.info - tutorials on Notes/Domino and more
Mon 6 May 2013, 12:53 PM
I wanted to introduce my new site, Mini-Lessons.info, as a place to find brief but useful demos and tutorials on a number of topics. There are a number of mini-lessons on Gimp 2.8 (a free open source alternative to Photoshop), as well as a few on IBM Notes/Domino and on our Genii Software products. I'm not sure whether I have worked out all the issues with leaving comments yet, but there are useful tutorials there. Of course, I am always open to suggestions. I want to do a series on XPages, as well as others on coexistence.
 
But I need to explain first that these are mini-lessons. The goal is to teach a trick or show a feature in three minutes or less (most meet that, and the average is under 2 1/2 minutes). That may not seem like a lot of time, but my purpose is to avoid the long, drawn out demos that leave you waiting and waiting to get to the meat of the matter. If you want 15 minute demos, there are plenty of places, but I hope to keep to the very short lesson format.
 
Also, every mini-lesson will have additional information, links, downloads and more on the Mini-Lessons.info site, but will also be available on Youtube for those who just want to follow the playlists for the various topics. To start you off, here is mini-lesson Notes #3 Hide Your Unmentionables using Domino's Internet Site Rules.
 

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Out Of Notes Part 2: Capsule Views
Tue 25 Jun 2013, 05:49 PM
This is the second in my new series, Out Of Notes, (see Part 1) which shows how the Midas Rich Text LSX can be used to take data out of Notes either temporarily or permanently. In this part, I introduce the new Capsule Views, which as small collections of documents exported together with a minimalist navigation between them. This makes it easy to send a snapshot of multiple documents together in a single file (whether .mht or .eml or .epub or others). In a very short video, I demonstrate how easy this can be with Midas V5.
 
Note: Accurate closed captions have been provided, and if English is not your first language, you might want to turn on the auto-translate. I also advise turning on HD and watching full screen so the captions show under the video.
 

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CoexLinks 3.0 - New release and new roadmap
Thu 13 Sep 2012, 07:40 AM
Last night, Genii Software released CoexLinks 3.0, the next major version of our highly regarded coexistence and migration software. As part of the new release, there are now three components to the CoexLinks product, all bundled together and sharing the same license and the same cost. 

CoexLinks: The core extension manager product that runs on an IBM Lotus Domino server. CoexLinks recognizes doclinks created either by users in IBM Lotus Notes or by applications running in either IBM Lotus Notes or IBM Lotus Domino. Doclinks can be converted to Notes URL hotspots, Web HTTP hotspots or NDL attachments. Selective conversion can be done for links from specific databases to allow gradual migration of some Notes applications to a web-based interface. In external email systems, hotspot links will act as Notes doclinks whether by triggering the Notes URL or launching the NDL attachment.

CoexLinks Clipper: A windows menu add-in that allows a user to copy a doclink, view link or db link onto the Windows clipboard in a format which will paste a matching link into an Outlook email or other products such as word processors that accept HTML pasting. This allows a use who has migrated to Outlook for email to continue to share Notes doclinks with other users in Notes, Outlook. As this utility evolves, it will also allow pasting of NDL attachments when CoexLinks is configured to use NDL attachments, and pasting of various links into Gmail, which does not accept the same clipboard formats.

CoexLinks Fidelity: A separate extension manager product which renders Notes rich text messages into high quality MIME so that tables, links, fonts, margins and such appear in the destination email the way they did in Lotus Notes. Also enhances rendering of message in iNotes. Going forward, this rendering will be tuned further to meet the needs of different email systems, but from its launch, this is compatible with all current versions of MS Outlook and Google Mail/Gmail. The CoexLinks Fidelity component will be available in approximately one week.

CoexLinks continues to enhance the coexistence and migration experience for those choosing to move from IBM Lotus Notes/Domino email to alternate email systems.

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Presenting three, possibly four, sessions at EntwicklerCamp
Wed 16 Feb 2011, 12:13 PM
Having avoid giving presentations for a while, I'm diving deep into the pool in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. I have two scheduled sessions already, and it appears that due to the illness of another speaker, I may do one or two more. The sessions I am definitely doing are:

Web Editors - CKEditor and Others
Montag, 21.02.2011 at 13.45-15.15 

A version of the CKEditor is now included with Domino 8.5.x. We will discuss how to use it in your applications, how to enhance it with custom settings, and when to use one of the other editors available. Related issues of Notes/Web coexistence will also be discussed. 


Spicing Up XPages with Classic Notes Development
Mittwoch, 23.02.2011 at 09.00-10.30 

In this session, we will explore ways to use the classic Notes development techniques and tools to enhance the Web 2.0 and XPages applications you are building today. Formula language, LotusScript and C API tricks and expertise don't have to be tossed out when you develop with the newer tools. Your will be given examples to take away as well as ideas to explore on your own. 

The sessions I might do are:

Putting Layers to the Test
Unknown date & time

This session will show a whole new array of techniques using layers, including techniques for building layers in DXL in Notes 8.5.x, and for using layers in any Notes version from Notes 6 onward. Discover tricks to create interactive layer techniques that will empower your applications in ways you didn't think possible.

Rich Text Tips, Tricks & Techniques
Unknown date & time

Explores many cool techniques available in Notes rich text that may surprise even experienced developers. From tips a user can perform to tricks and techniques for developers, these will open your eyes to the power of Notes Rich Text.

I'd be happy to see any of you there. I should note, there will be a special offer for Genii Software products to those who attend. Details at the conference.

Update: I'll be doing the Rich Text session and not the layers. Should be fun to update it a bit over next few days.
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Renaming a tadpole to reflect its froggishness
Sun 11 Jan 2009, 08:35 AM
To put it bluntly:

CoexLinks 2.x: Improves life for customers choosing to NOT USE Notes/Domino email
CoexLinks 3.x: Also, improves life for customers choosing TO USE Notes/Domino email

Given that, one suggestion for naming has been CoexLinks Universal.  Another might be CoexLinks Fidelity.  What would you call this software tadpole that is growing into a full-fledged software frog?

(read on) for more details

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8.5.1 is a wonderful, terrific release - with some bugs
Mon 7 Sep 2009, 01:03 PM
This is hardly surprising.  All software has bugs, and the bigger and more complex your software, often the more bugs.  I have focused on a few very significant bugs, but "significant" is a tricky word.  Bugs in a Notes client have no significance to those who use only the server.  Bugs in application development code have no significance to those who use only mail.

So, let me be completely clear.  I have a complete, total obsession with rich text, MIME, HTML and coexistence.  There is quite likely nobody at IBM who spends as much time pushing and shoving and fighting with rich text, MIME and HTML as I do.  That means that issues I find with these areas have great significance to me.  They may not have similar significance to you.  You may not care about whether your emails show up in clear, coherent MIME, or whether they show up at all.  You may not care whether some set of circumstances may lead to corrupted or incorrect data.  The famous Pentium FDIV bug probably didn't actually affect almost anybody, but the significance was huge to those who depended on absolute reliability in large number crunching applications.

The bugs I find and make a big stink about (I find many that are not worth noting, or only worth noting internally) are significant to me, and perhaps to IBM.  I don't expect IBM to assign the same significance to them that I do, but I do assume that it might be worth paying a bit of attention to the one person who really cares enough to push on these issues, cares enough to painstakingly analyze and document not only the bugs by the reasons for the bugs.  IBM doesn't have to pay attention, but if I am finding issues their QA department is not, perhaps they should.  Who else is going to waste the cycles?

Let me repeat again and again - Notes/Domino 8.5.1 is a wonderful advance in a terrific piece of software (or will be once it comes out of beta).  I think it should be widely considered by all Notes customers.  They should just be aware of all the facts, good and bad, so they can make an informed decision.

Disclaimer: Notes/Domino 8.5.1 (beta 8) is beta software, and nothing I say or do may be relevant to the final release.

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Preaching beyond the choir
Mon 29 Jun 2009, 09:47 PM
For many years, I have heard stories about how users have mentioned Lotus Notes, and gotten confused responses from others who equate Lotus Notes with Lotus 1-2-3, and think the product disappeared long ago.  I had not had that experience personally until recently, when I had it twice in three weeks, once with a college friend of my wife and once with a man who works with "Unix software development" and initially asked, "Didn't that disappear in the 1970's?", and when I replied that he was thinking of Lotus 1-2-3 (though even then he is inaccurate), and I was speaking of Lotus Notes, said, "Well, pretty much the same thing.  Nobody actually uses it anymore, do they?"

I could draw snarky, and probably undeserved, conclusions about IBM marketing or public perceptions, but I have a different point to make.  These are people who know nothing about Lotus Notes, nothing about the corporate email wars, nothing about standards.  My wife's friend, the Unix developer, my parents, a couple of neighbors - they know nothing at all about these issues that consume our time and focus.  And yet, when my wife goes on to say that I have a new product, and they ask politely what it is, she is able to explain.  She just says, "You know how sometimes you email somebody, and when they reply, your original email looks terrible?  His product fixes that."

Then something happens that has never happened to me in my life as a software developer.  People who know nothing about Notes or email fidelity or standards light up - my wife's friend, my Dad, my neighbor - and they say, "Yeah, I know just what you mean.  Do you think his product could fix my email?"  People get it.  They understand what I'm doing, and they want it for themselves.  Not people who think making rich text dance is hot stuff, or people who are worried about the coexistence of doclinks between Domino and Exchange, but ordinary folks who not only aren't part of the choir, they don't even know the choir exists.

You may ask yourself (if you have gotten this far), "So, what does this have to do with me?"  Well, think about it a minute.  I'm not likely to sell my wife's friend or my Dad or my neighbor on Notes, but what about a small business owner who uses Gmail and curses because it is limited and messes up emails to clients?  What if you could talk about Lotus Foundations, and say "Your email will get to your clients looking just like it left your mailbox, even if it is fancy and carefully formatted"?  Don't even mention iFidelity - talk about the results.  If my Dad can perk up about email - he uses a free email service that probably has more ads than features - imagine if a restaurant owner who wants to impress customers heard about a truly full-featured email client that sends mail which looks crisp and professional without paying a service to create fancy HTML emails.  He or she might just perk up too.

This is functionality that people get, not just here in the choir room, but out there where people aren't listening yet, but might be persuaded.

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Quick gut check on idea spaces for Genii Jam
Wed 9 Apr 2008, 10:19 AM
Does anybody have an opinion on whether we should use products for idea spaces, so a list such as: CoexEdit, CoexLinks, Midas Rich Text, OpenSesame, New Product Ideas

or should we use functionality for idea spaces, so: Coexistence, Editing, Migration, Programmability, Rendering

or something else entirely.  Any opinions?
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CoexEdit 1.4 being loaded on website today
Tue 6 Jun 2006, 12:32 PM
Our latest version of CoexEdit, Version 1.4, is being loaded onto our website today.  Some of the most important changes are enhanced support for multibyte characters, including Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Korean, a new memory management system and better support for the quirks of the FCKeditor.  Once the version is completely up and the press release is ready, I'll post again.

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Microsoft interoperability
Mon 7 Feb 2005, 10:37 PM
It is too soon to tell whether Microsoft interoperability is an oxymoron or not, but at least they are saying the right things... (read on)
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CoexEdit 2.0 - Instant database population
Mon 2 Jul 2007, 09:15 PM
Another feature I think people will like in CoexEdit 2.0 is the ability to copy all the resource design elements to a database instantly.  Basically, there is a magic profile document, and if CoexEdit sees it set in a database, and if the CoexEditAutoUpdateDB parameter is set in the NOTES.INI on the server, all appropriately marked design elements from the resource database will be copied to the target database.  This will eliminate the problems with developers not realizing that a particular element is needed.  It will also allow a company to update a number of databases at one time.  Additional features are in CoexEdit 2.0, and in future releases, to automate even more of the process of converting a database to use CoexEdit.  The goal of all these changes is to make it as simple, fast and reliable as possible to enable web/Notes coexistence in your database.

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Staffing for the peaks - support flexibility
Wed 24 May 2006, 10:57 AM
Years ago I read an intriguing article about power plants, and how they had to have the capacity to handle peak loads but normally didn't use most of that capacity.  We are seeing something of the same issue here with support CoexLinks, except taken to extremes.  Much of the time, there are few support calls.  CoexLinks just chugs away, doing its thing, and the only support calls are pre-sales support when people have questions about initial setup.

But we have a lot of customers by now, and we want to make sure that they always get the support they need.  And recently, we hit one of those rare times when three large customers were all having problems at the same time.  It turned out to be a memory management problem which led to regular crashes, not due to a memory leak, but due to a conflict between processes.  Most of our customers didn't see it, but these three saw it on a regular basis, so we got quite a few support calls.  Eventually, with lots of clues, we found the problem, fixed it and released Version 2.7 which eliminates the problem.  Now, we are back to crickets chirping in the support center, but the experience led us to decide to expand our support capability and separate out some of the pre-sales and post-sales support.  We will soon send our customers a letter along the lines of the following, although we are still setting up the appropriate phone number and e-mail addresses and such.  I just wanted to give you all a heads up and explain the reasoning a bit more fully:

Due to explosive growth in our coexistence tools, Genii Software has announced that its partner, Granite Software, which has been providing both pre and post sales support as well as being a full reseller of our CoexLinks product, will refocus entirely on sales and pre-sales support.  Post-sales support will be taken over by The Turtle Partnership Ltd in England, which will provide telephone, e-mail and database support.  This move will provide better coverage for our many European and Asian customers, while freeing up Granite Software to handle the many simultaneous prospects for CoexLinks, as well move forward with its award winning spamJam and ZMerge product lines.  Genii Software will continue to provide second line support for all coexistence customers, but also focus more heavily on its research and development into advancements in its existing and new product lines.

All three companies are members of Penumbra, a unique international consortium of highly trained ISVs and consulting firms working with IBM Lotus Notes and Domino and other technologies.  All members are separate companies, but collaborate on occasion to provide a synergy and breadth that benefits their mutual customers.
I am excited by the prospect of working more closely with the Turtle Partnership, and am pleased that this sort of arrangement allows them to meet whatever level of support we may require in a given week, since they already provide administrative support to a number of companies and have the size and flexibility to handle any peak times.  I'm also pleased that Granite Software will continue to fill the invaluable role in pre-sales support.  As always, Genii Software will focus on on-going research and development, as well as second level support.

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The word of the day
Wed 28 Jan 2004, 01:56 PM
Long before reality TV sank down to the nadir of poor taste and then pulled out a pneumatic drill and kept going down, before Peewee Herman was caught with more than just his hand in the not so proverbial popcorn, Peewee's Playhouse was one of those guilty pleasures on television... (read on)
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Having a blast, sort of
Tue 7 Feb 2006, 03:41 PM
Well, not really.  Actually, we are sending out an e-mail blast to all the people who visited our booths (the combined Genii Software/Granite Software "Coexistence Central" booth), and it is a hard thing to get used to.  Clearly, this isn't SPAM, in the sense that these people all volunteered to have their badges scanned in full knowledge that we would follow up, and many, many of them wanted follow up information.  Still, I have always avoided anything that could even have a hint of SPAM, and it is inevitable that there will be people who only wanted a C.U.L.T. shirt who won't even remember who we are.

The flip side is that sending the letter out gives us an opportunity to reach people who were interested, but who were so inundated by the Lotusphere experience that they might not make it back on their own.  It also gives them an incredibly easy way to sign up for an evaluation of any of our products, without wading through an evaluation form and filling out contact information.  They also got a t-shirt, so if they have to go to all the trouble to replay and say "REMOVE ME", it still probably isn't that bad a deal.

It is just odd being on the other side.  I have received lots of e-mails from vendors I have visited at Lotuspheres past.  A few times it has been well worth the follow up, as I have bought the products.  Many times it has been less useful to either side.  I don't usually resent the intrusion when I do get such a mailing after Lotusphere, but I know some people do.

I feel "conflicted".  Ah well, I guess I'll go make tea.
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CoexLinks 2.7 is out and available
Mon 5 Jun 2006, 02:14 PM
CoexLinks 2.7 is out and available on our website.  Actually, it has been out for a short while already, but we decided not to make a big announcement until we had the results of some early adopters.  The success of this version has been universal.  Not only does it  eliminate some infrequent, but very annoying, crashes at certain customer sites, it also adds some additional flexibility to the filtering options added in 2.5.  It is now possible to limit doclink conversions to certain databases, such as exchange.box for those working with the Microsoft Exchange Connector, which allows greater control in an environment where some users are still using Lotus Notes mail and others are using Microsoft Outlook mail.  The ability to control which doclinks are processed has been enhanced due to customer feedback about the very popular options added in Version 2.5,  Finally, the ability to selectively generate URL links for some doclinks while creating NDL attachments has been enhanced to aid the increasing number of customers who use want to wen enable some databases while continuing Notes client support for other databases.

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Mind the gap!
Fri 2 Jul 2004, 10:09 AM
Yes, I've just returned from London, and a disappointing end to the Euro 2004 hope for England, with a fair bit of touristy tripe in between.  Still, the gap I have in mind here is not that between the train and the platform, but the gap between the promises any company can make about service and the reality about providing that service every day and every week of every year.  As many of you are aware, Genii Software is not a large company, although it is a bit larger than it used to be, and it is sometimes a challenge to provide the level of service we would like to all those days, weeks and years... (read on)
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Going to London
Wed 22 Oct 2003, 12:10 PM
I'm travelling to London on Saturday for the Groupware Magazine Admin-Developer 2003 conference, which starts Monday.  I'll be presenting a couple of sessions, one called Rich Text Tips, Tricks and Techniques and another called Advanced Notes/Web Coexistence.  In addition, I'll be meeting with a few people, and should have some material at the Penumbra booth.  I'd love to meet up with any clients, partners or even blog-devotees.  Let me know if you are attending or will be in the area and would like to meet up.

Other presenters include Rocky Oliver, Rich Schwartz, Andrew Pollack, Dieter Stalder and a bunch more.  It should be a great conference, and a bet you could still get in if you tried.  

I'll be connected and might blog while in London, but I will certainly post the session materials and demos after they happen.
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From change to consistency
Tue 7 Mar 2006, 06:28 PM
It struck me today that I spent a number of years in my professional life trying to make a difference.  Not so much a difference as in saving the world, but a difference as in writing code that would stand out, that would change, that would look appealing, or at the very least would allow others to make things stand out, change, and look appealing.  Even my first "break out" product, the Midas Rich Text LSX, was originally conceived as a way to change rich text in wild and wonderful ways.  I hope I can safely say that it has done that.

But evolving tactics has left me with a funny set of goals recently, somehow consistent with my own aging (OK, I'm only 43, but I'm certainly not 25 anymore).  Now, the lion's share of my effort is in making things not change.  Whether through products, including Midas, or through help I give people, I find a lot of what I talk about is how to make rich text still look the same in HTML, or functionality to still work the same on the Web as it did in Notes, or to make MIME look and work the same both coming and going, or to make doclinks keep working the same way they did before after getting sent to a different mail system.  I guess it is part and parcel of the coexistence kick I am on lately, but it seems ironic when I can cheer because a particularly gnarly bit of rich text can be converted to MIME and converted back and still look the same.  It just shouldn't be so darn pleasing to have something look just the way it did before.

And not only is it my passion and day to day job, other people are willing to pay for it as well.  Go figure!
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Speaking at Lotusphere again - different topic
Fri 21 Nov 2003, 10:51 AM
Well, for the fourth year in a row, I will be speaking at Lotusphere, but for the first time, it won't be any variation of my rich text talk.  This year I'm doing a talk on Advanced Lotus Notes/Web Coexistence, which is all about how to exploit some lesser known, or even well known, the features in R5, ND6 and ND6.5 to design once for both platforms, and when not to bother.  The official abstract is:

Discover useful tricks and techniques for handling forms, views and databases that must be used in both the Notes client and a web browser. Learn ways to better handle rich text fields, @DbLookups, JavaScript and UI methods to allow an optimal experience for both Notes users and web users. Learn when to create two sets of design elements and when to use just one. Covers native and third party solutions for managing Notes/Web coexistence.


I hope to see some of you there!  For those of you who are going to miss my demo filled rich text talk, I still plan to include some fun and fireworks.  Come and join the fun.
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If you are coming to my session, come early
Fri 23 Jan 2004, 10:56 AM
Here I was under the impression that if I gave a session on something other than rich text, which everybody thinks of as "my thing", I could at least be assured of a small, quiet crowd who mostly wandered in thinking they could catch an afternoon nap.  After all, while I have done a lot of thinking and talking about "Notes/Web Coexistence", I kind of made up the term myself, so it should scarcely be a big draw.  At least, that is what I have told myself... (read on)
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Microsoft to acquire Groove and Ray Ozzie
Thu 10 Mar 2005, 11:56 PM
Well, everybody knows by now, but I thought I would put in my two cents.  I think this is a big acquisition for Microsoft, and one that will reap many rewards.  I do not think it will be an easy integration, nor do I think Ray Ozzie walks on water, but I think he is a visionary of the sort that Microsoft has lacked recently.  There are a lot of big changes coming in the IT world, and Microsoft has take some big risks to stay ahead of them, but this was a smart risk... (read on)
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What is your favorite web based rich text editor?
Tue 2 Dec 2003, 09:25 AM
I am working on a project to test and improve coexistence between the Notes client and the leading web based rich text editors, whether they are DHTML based, Java based or whatever.  I have a list of some, and wondered if any of you know of others.  Also, if you have strong feelings about any of these, pro or con, let me know that as well.  Some of the editors I know about are listed below, along with others I found on a quick scan of the web.

Know any others?  Have any strong opinions about the usefulness of any of these, about the level of support, about integration with Notes/Domino?  Which have you used, and which do you think are most popular.  Let me know what you think.  I'll try to take the final results, along with my project findings, and publish some useful results at the end as a resource for others.

EditorComments
Known, or recommended
Java applet that comes with NotesYuck, but I have to work with it anyway, I guess.
MS DHTML controlFreebie available from Microsoft is basis for some of the other editors, such as eWebEditpro and EditLive! for Windows (I think)
eWebeditProIntegration with Domino done by Ken Yee
EditLive! Both an EditLive! for Windows and EditLive! for Java
RealObjects edit-on Pro
DevEdit
htmlAreaRecommended by Ruediger Seiffert in Gold 6 forumDHTML based editor, and free
Know nothing about - found via search
WebEdit ProfessionalMore of a website management tool, but looks like it could be used to edit content.
WebEditCan't tell whether they are resellers or this is theirs.
Web-EditNot sure whether it is really a rich content editor, or a website editor
Web Wiz Rich Text EditorSays it is "free"

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Foolish inconsistency
Mon 1 Dec 2003, 01:00 PM
Notes/Web Coexistence Tip #4

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Ahh, but when is a foolish inconsistency the hobgoblin of disgruntled minds?  That is the question.  

A customer was using our Send It! sample (sending MIME mail using Midas), and raised the question about why the doclink symbols don't look the same when sent through the mail.  He is using our new feature (only available in an interim release at the moment) to send doclinks using the original doclink symbols, or so I thought.  He tried all the different types of links, doclinks, view links, db links and even anchor links, and they all looked different.  

I realized that I accidentally used the web versions of these symbols rather than the Notes versions.  That's right, the symbols used on the web do not match those used in Notes.  In fact, the symbols used on the web are not even the same between R5 and ND 6... (read on)
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CoexLinks - A typical support scenario
Wed 7 Jun 2006, 08:30 AM
A potential CoexLinks customer from a very well known company called yesterday.  The evaluator, whom I will call Eva,  said that she had installed and configured CoexLinks as directed (which takes about five minutes), but that the NDL attachments were not showing up.  Since about 95% of all CoexLinks support calls come with initial setup, it was fairly easy to guess where we were going.  Below is a very loose approximation of our conversation:

Ben: Did you add the disclaimer text so that you could tell if the message was actually modified by CoexLinks (n.b. disclaimer text is set using COEXPrependDoclink parameters)
Eva: Yes, I added that.
Ben: Did the disclaimer text show up in the converted message in Outlook?
Eva: No, it didn't
Ben:  Ah, so the message wasn't touched by CoexLinks.  There are three common reasons why that might be true.  Let's take them one by one.  First, it is possible that CoexLinks didn't load at all, because the license file or software were installed wrong.  Since you have an evaluation license, the name of the server does not matter, but the license and software have to be in the right place (n.b. the Domino executable directory).  You can tell if CoexLinks started because in the log file, there will be a copyright message when the server was started.
Eva: CoexLinks started correctly, and I see the copyright message.
Ben: Good.  Second, it is possible that the message was converted to MIME before it left your Notes client.  Did you send the message from a Notes client or from an agent?
Eva: I sent it from a Notes client.  How would I check about whether it got converted to MIME first?
Ben: Open your location document, click on the Mail tab, and look for Format for messages addressed to internet addresses.  It should be set to Notes Rich Text Format, and not MIME Format.
Eva: OK, I looked, and it is set correctly to Notes Rich Text Format.
Ben: Good.  OK, the third most likely possibility is that the e-mail message never touched the server on which you have CoexLinks installed.  Let me guess, the database from which you sent the message is on Server A, but your mail server is Server B.  Server A is a development server, so you put CoexLinks on it to test.  Is that right?
Eva: Yes, that's right.  So, I have to change my mail account to point at Server A in order to test this?
Ben:  That's right, because even though the database is on Server A, mail sent by you from that database never really touches Server A.  If it were created by an agent on Server A, or routed through Server A, or your mailbox was on Server A, CoexLinks would have a chance to operate.
Eva: Great!  I'll set it up and let you know if I have any problems.  Thank you so much.
Ben: That is what we are here for.  Please let us know if you have any other questions.

That is a typical CoexLinks support call.  Once CoexLinks is configured and routing is set up properly, there is hardly ever a reason to call.  It just hums away, doing its thing.  Still, I am glad that our new support organization is taking over, because with the number of new customers we have recently, this conversation is likely to be repeated often.

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Lotusphere and the "coins of the realm"
Fri 27 Jan 2006, 06:36 PM
I have been to a lot of Lotusphere's, and I always try to find some way to make it fresh.  In the early years, I went to sessions, in the middle years I spoke at sessions, and in recent years, I have avoided sessions like the plague.  Having tried all of those things, I thought it was about time Genii Software had our own pedestal, so what I did was stand at the pedestal and talk to people and listen to people... and talk to people and listen to people... and talk hoarsely to people and listen to people.  Well, you get the picture.  It was wonderful and exhilarating in some ways, and supremely frustrating in others.  In recent years, besides avoiding sessions, I have tried to hard to take the pulse of the our community and industry and have gotten some great product and feature ideas, and have also met a lot of people with varied interests.

But being on the Product Showcase is different.  Certainly, you meet very interesting people, and hear lots of interesting ideas, but there is a different hum, and the ideas are different... (read on)
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Advanced Web/Notes Coexistence
Tue 16 Sep 2003, 12:50 AM
I keep looking at the calendar and realizing that I only have about six weeks until the UK Admin/Developer conference.  I am presenting on two topics, but the first
Monday Oct 27  1:30 - 2:45 pm
Rich Text Tips, Tricks and Techniques 


is a relative no-brainer.  I gave a session like this in Düsseldorf in February, and although I can never stand giving the same session twice and will probably change everything, I am sure of what I want to say.  The second session has me more worried.
Monday Oct 27  4:35 - 5:50 pm
Advanced Notes/Web Coexistence


Abstract: Discover useful tricks and techniques for handling forms, views and databases that must be used in both the Notes client and a web browser. Learn ways to better handle rich text fields, @DbLookups, JavaScript and UI methods to allow an optimal experience for both Notes users and web users. Learn when to create two sets of design elements and when to use just one. Covers native and third party solutions for managing Notes/Web coexistence. 

What was I thinking?  Do I know enough about this topic?  Can I present it clearly enough?  I might not be so worried, but there is such an incredible set of speakers for this event (including Bill Hume and Ed Brill from IBM, as well as Bob Balaban, Rocky Oliver, Damien Katz, Daniel Nashed, George Chiesa, Rich Schwartz, Kim Greene, Andrew Pollack, Gabriella Davis,  Brian Benz, Dieter Stalder and more) that I feel I need to live up to the event.

I do have a message I want to communicate, and some ideas for samples to show, but I would love to hear any thoughts, wishes, ideas from anyone out there.  Whether you will be there in person or would simply like to use the sample code I am sure to post here afterwards, let me know what would be valuable to you.  Post here or contact me at  with ideas.

By the way, I hope you can come to the conference.  I think it will be more valuable than some of the bigger conferences, and with a lot more access to the speakers.  If you are in the UK or Europe, this is a lot easier to get to than a conference in the US.  If you are in the US, check out the low fares and come make a long weekend out of it.  If you are in Asia or Australia, I haven't the foggiest idea of whether this is really an option, but I'd be happy to see any of you as well.
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Notes/Web Coexistence Tip #1
Thu 23 Oct 2003, 10:07 AM
In the template for the Notes 6 Gold forum, which is available in the Sandbox, I happened to notice the following code:

<SELECT name="URLpick" onChange=
window.open('/forum/'+this.options[this.selectedIndex].value,'_top')>
                        <OPTION VALUE=""  SELECTED>Select view</OPTION>
<OPTION VALUE="/DateAllThreadedWeb?openView">Date (threaded)
<OPTION VALUE="/DateAllFlatweb?openView">Date (flat)
<OPTION VALUE="/DateAllwithExcerptWeb?Openview">With excerpt
<OPTION VALUE="/AuthorAllThreadedWeb?Openview">Author
<OPTION VALUE="/CategoryAllThreadedWeb?Openview">Category
<OPTION VALUE="/PlatformAllThreadedWeb?Openview">Platform
<OPTION VALUE="/ReleaseAllThreadedWeb?Openview">Release
</SELECT>

squished into a table cell along with lots of other passthru-HTML.  It took me a moment to realize that this was the solution the developer had found for a combo-box that automatically follows the link when a selection is made, as opposed to having to press a Go button after selecting.  

Now, what's wrong with this picture? Read on to find out...
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Odd behavior with CSS in Notes client
Fri 7 Nov 2003, 03:50 PM
I am not sure how to categorize this post, so let's just file it under "Oddities".  While preparing for my session on Advanced Notes/Web Coexistence at the UK Admin-Developer Conference, I came across this odd behavior with CSS in the Notes client.

Showing the problem
Here is what I did to cause the problem.  I created this very simple CSS in a Style Sheet resource:

TD
{
   font-family: Verdana;
   font-size: 8pt;
}

and I inserted that StyleSheet resource into the CleanSheet form, which is basically just one big rich text Body field.  I then created a table and entered some text into the table.  Sure enough, it was in 8pt Verdana.

So far, so good.  Next, I highlighted one part of the text and tried to change the font to 12pt Comic Sans MS.  I say "tried" because it didn't work.  The StyleSheet seemingly takes precedence over even specifically applied text attributes.  

Still OK, but not intuitive.  But here comes the odd part.  Next, I previewed the text in a browser.  Guess what?  The text that I had entered in the table but not modified was still in 8pt Verdana, but the part I had tried to change was in 12pt Comic Sans MS.

So what?
OK, the reason this is stupid is because the IBM developers took a feature from the web, applied it to the Notes client, and made it work only differently in the Notes client even though there is a direct mapping to the web feature.  Or to put it another way, they made it not work properly in Notes because the specific attributes should have overridden the style.  Instead, the style overrode the specific attributes.

What is the core problem?
There is a "core problem" or really "core difference" between HTML and Notes rich text.  In HTML is that there is such a thing as "plain text", or text with no attributes.  Just add text to the HTML with no font tags or CSS and you have "plain text".  This is not true in Notes.  In Notes, all rich text has text attributes.  Thus, the CSS can't just apply to unadorned "plain text", because there is no such thing.

How could IBM address this?
One thing they could have done when implementing this is to new font setting called "Default Plain Text".  Setting text with this would let it either follow the workstation default settings (similar to how Default Sans Serif and Default Serif work) or follow the CSS, if there was any.  This would be an "ideal" solution, but probably not a good solution, as it would be hard to go back and change all the text that should be "plain text".

A more realistic approach which could still be utilized very easily  would be that IBM could simply do what they do with the web, which is accept Default Sans Serif 10pt as "plain text".  This would be easy to use, as it is already done with the web and would not require changing most existing rich text.  Anything in plain 10pt Default Sans Serif would either use the workstation defaults or the CSS.  I would recommend IBM do this for ND7, if they have not already for ND6.5 (I haven't tested it yet)

What to do in the meantime?
Be careful if you use this in the Notes client to inform users they should not change the text directly, or at least be aware of the problem so you know what is happening if you get a bug report.
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My impressions on the whole portal vs. Notes/Domino
Thu 29 Jan 2004, 09:22 AM
On Ed Brill's personal weblog, there is a short post on SearchDomino's article on Comforting the Domino base, but the post is followed by a bunch of comments.  The tone of these is fairly negative, in my opinion, and seem somewhat non-reflective of what I have heard generally here at Lotusphere, at least this year.

Last year, a lot of the "Domino base" people came away from Lotusphere pretty worried.  While we have heard that "Notes is dead" a bunch of times before, it wasn't usually IBM saying it, and no matter what revisionist history IBM is now promoting, IBM was saying it quite clearly.  This changed over the course of the year, particularly in the past six months.  I feel like I was lucky and got a bit of a head start on the message when at the London developer conference a few months ago, and through following blogs and talking to a lot of "connected" people.  Nonetheless, I came to Lotusphere with a bit of trepidation, which was not allayed much by either the Business Development day opening session or the General Opening session - at least not at first.

Look folks, IBM used smoke and mirrors for some of the demos.  Try to act shocked.  They acted like some things were amazing that weren't.  So what demos don't do that.  The really important message, the critical message for most of the scared, which I almost missed through focusing on the picking apart of the details, was what most of the customers seem to take away from the sessions.  This can be expressed in two sentences:

1) Notes/Domino is NOT GOING AWAY!

2) IBM is ready to fight Microsoft to take over the messaging market

With these two ideas in mind, the smoke and mirrors take on a different spin.  Rather than feeling clever because I figured out  that the Notes in the rich client demo used an OLE trick which wouldn't work on Linux, I feel like a schmuck because I didn't catch the message.  IBM is willing to go to almost any lengths to show its commitment to Notes.  Why is that a bad thing again?

So how have the customers responded?  By going to Notes/Domino oriented sessions in droves.  Last year, there was a real hesitation.  If Notes/Domino were going away, should we waste time going to those sessions.  This year, my Notes/Web Coexistence session was packed.  Andrew's Admin client session was packed and is being repeated.  Scott Good's 25 tricks for LotusScript session was packed and overflowed.  Rocky's Extreme LotusScript session was packed.  Tom and Joe's excellent Java for the Domino Developer session was very full, even in the last session before the party for two lesser known (and very short) speakers.

Does all this mean portals and workplace are out the window?  Of course not.  Those sessions are not as well attended because you can't take anything back home to use today.  Still, I heard a lot of people who actually do think portals are a good idea, so long as IBM can tackle the difficult tasks of making them installable and affordable, and making them work on a less than gigantic resource footprint.  Can IBM do that?  Of course, but it is an evolution.

I may sound like I've sipped at the IBM koolaid, but I do genuinely believe, and think most people are starting to believe, that the evolution of Notes is a good thing.  Not always the evolution as IBM would have foreseen it, but the evolution as IBM's customers have driven IBM to see it.  Keep up the pressure, it is working.

Oh yes, and the willingness to fight Microsoft is very well received.  People are sick of being screwed by Microsoft's policies and welcome some feisty competition, because with any luck it will make both companies work harder to provide what customers genuinely want, not just what the marketing department says they want.
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