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


Fri 10 Jul 2009, 03:54 PM
It just isn't fair to complain about Microsoft, IBM and Google and then not hold myself to the same standards.  Earlier today, I posted One company on 8.5: From Notes to iNotes to Notes, but the iFidelity rendering just wasn't that great.  When I posted the graphic, I wrote:
The tabbed table is back.  Notice that there are still some rendering issues, which we are working on correcting with iFidelity, but all data is intact.
But after I posted that, I started to feel uneasy.  Was I just settling for "better" and not "right"?  That's not what I'm after with this product or with my business.  So, despite having some other work to do from a business point of view, I slipped on my developer hat and worked for a while longer.  It was a challenge, but the tweaks I made will help other places besides Lotus iNotes.  I feel a little better now.


Email that I posted before with some remaining rendering issues

Email after being forwarded from iNotes with iFidelity, and all tabs working.



Original email (so you can see just how many rendering issues there are)

Original email in Notes 8.5 client



Email after making the fixes I did to iFidelity today.

A lot better, but Dojo editor seems top strip out some colors (including the "Geek" in SpamGeek), so now I have to see if I can find a work around for Dojo bugs

Email after being forwarded from iNotes with iFidelity plus today's fixes

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Fri 10 Jul 2009, 11:59 AM
In yet another demonstration of how collaboration via email is broken, I decided to give IBM the benefit of the doubt on all counts.  This is a single company using rich text routing (where possible), with the latest released versions, Lotus Notes 8.5 and Lotus iNotes 8.5, using the latest release mail template.  In this example, I used the same SpamGeek log message created by Daniel Nashed as I did in my earlier post going from Notes to Outlook to Gmail to Notes.

In this example, Person A sends a rich text message to Person B, which is part of his own company, through normal Notes email.  It arrives in rich text format, as you would expect.  Person B wants to forward the rich text email to Person C, also in the same company.  If he had done so using a Notes client, the email would have arrived exactly as it was sent.  But Person B is working offsite today, and logs into his email using Lotus iNotes, running with the appropriate  template on the Domino 8.5 mail server he uses.  He simply forwards the email, using the regular Notes name (not an internet address) for Person C.  Later, Person C opens the email in her Lotus Notes 8.5 client.

So, Lotus Notes 8.5 to Lotus iNotes 8.5 to Lotus Notes 8.5, all within the same company using normal routing without SMTP.  Let's see what happens.



Original SpamGeek log file sent from Lotus Notes 8.5 by Person A

Original email in Notes 8.5 client



Email in Lotus iNotes 8.5, rendered by the Domino server from rich text message  

Note that the tabbed table is represented by links, rather than flattened out into a regular table.

Email displayed in iNotes 8.5



Email in Lotus Notes 8.5 client for Person C after being forwarded from Lotus iNotes 8.5 from Person B.

The links still appear, but are all broken, as they point back to Person B's draft version.  Hence, all data on those other tabs is inaccessible.

Email forwarded from iNotes with broken tab links



Email in Lotus iNotes 8.5, rendered by iFidelity on the Domino server from rich text message  

Note that the tabbed table is flattened out, with tabs shown individually.

Inline JPEG image



Email in Lotus Notes 8.5 client for Person C after being forwarded from Lotus iNotes 8.5 from Person B.

The tabbed table is back.  Notice that there are still some rendering issues, which we are working on correcting with iFidelity, but all data is intact.

Update: I made some more fixes and updated this image with what the new version does.

Email after being forwarded from iNotes with iFidelity, and all tabs working.

Copyright © 2009 Genii Software Ltd.

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Fri 10 Jul 2009, 10:25 AM
Email collaboration is a no-brainer, right?  You send or forward or reply from person to person, sharing information with everybody involved.  It may not be as efficient or elegant as using a shared Notes database, but it is what a lot of the world thinks of when they think of collaboration.  So, as a simple test, I thought I'd start with the most commonly used versions of Notes, Outlook and Gmail, and try sending mail from one to another.  I assumed Notes 8 to be most widely used, although if somebody objects, I can do this from Notes 7, which may still be ahead of Notes 8.  I assumed Outlook 2003 to be most widely used.  I used the "normal" version of Gmail.

My first test is with a SpamGeek log file that Daniel Nashed posted in the Business Partner forum a little while ago (allowing distribution with attribution), as this was a fairly complex table that was being shared, and might well have been forwarded via email.  Look at the original image, and then how much is lost after being forwarded to Outlook and Gmail and back.  Then look at the third image and see how much more is preserved with iFidelity added in, even including the tabbed table, despite the fact that the email is forwarded through both Outlook and Gmail.  iFidelity 3.0 can make the entire collaboration more effective, even though it only runs inside Notes.


Original SpamGeek log file sent from Lotus Notes 8

Original email sent from Notes 8



Email in Lotus Notes 8 after being sent to first Outlook 2003, then Gmail, then forwarded back.  
Note that the table is flattened out (not tabbed), the tab titles are missing entirely, along with whatever contextual information they carried, the cell borders inside are all missing, the spacing is off, the fonts are smaller, and so on.

Email round trip without iFidelity


Email in Lotus Notes 8 after being sent to first Outlook 2003, then Gmail, then forwarded back, with iFidelity used

Email round trip with iFidelity

Copyright © 2009 Genii Software Ltd.

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