IdeaJam(tm) feed for Craig Wiseman

Symphony / : Provide a 'skin' for Symphony that mimics the Office 2003 menu structure

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:43:54 +0000

Author: Craig Wiseman
Tags: compatibility office menus
Idea:

For many users, It's easier to move from Office 2000/2003 to Symphony than to Office 2007, but it would be almost transparent if IBM made an optional menu (File, Edit, etc) that mimicked the Office 2000/2003 menu structure. Corel does this with WordPerfect Workspace Manager, and it's very useful. Link

re: Provide a 'skin' for Symphony that mimics the Office 2003 menu structure

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:21:15 +0000

Author: Bill Malchisky
Comment: I use WP for this reason (and others, as it's a good product). I also use Symphony. I agree..."Make it so!"

Notes Client / Other: I'm thankful for Notes/Domino, BPs and the community.

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:30:19 +0000

Author: Craig Wiseman
Tags: thanksgiving
Idea:

Lotus, then IBM have provided us with an excellent platform to build upon. It allows us to directly and fully answer (internal/external) customers needs in a reliable fashion. Despite some rocky times (everyone has their Dark Ages), overall Lotus/IBM have listened to the user base and moved the platform forward.

Business Partners have made a fanstastic impact in helping deliver real solutions to real needs quickly. Notes/Domino almost defined RAD in a practical way, and the BPs took that an ran.

The ND community is a wonderfully diverse group of folks who have put pressure on Lotus/IBM when needed and really helped move things along while still being fun and nice to be around.

re: I'm thankful for Notes/Domino, BPs and the community.

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 15:03:39 +0000

Author: Craig Wiseman
Comment: maybe not a thought, but a sentiment. It's close: { Link }

Notes Client / Other: I wish the Productivity Editors could read Office 2007 files

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 01:50:12 +0000

Author: Craig Wiseman
Tags: office compatibility
Idea:

To allow us to really use them as replacments for Office, it seems to me like we'd need to be able to natively read/write:

Office 97-2007

Word Perfect 9 - 12

OpenOffice (not just ODF)

SmartSuite

re: I wish the Productivity Editors could read Office 2007 files

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 03:54:12 +0000

Author: Craig Wiseman
Comment: @1 - Mika, I agree with you completely. Howver, the reality of business (in my neck of the woods) is that we DO have to interact (collaborate?) with the enemy on a pretty regular basis.

Notes Client / Other: Since MAPI-support has been removed, Notes should have a standard API to access email functions

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:36:07 +0000

Author: Craig Wiseman
Tags: MAPI VIM
Idea:

MAPI-functionality was removed in R6. In order to support customers better and compete with Outlook, there should be a standard API-based way for 3rd party apps to access basic Notes email funtions.

It is incredibly frustrating to install many many 3rd party apps (Olympus' DSs Player Pro is biting me at the moment) to realize it supports Outlook and Outlook Express, but not Notes.

I'd vote to restore MAPI on the Windows platform, but I don't actually care, as long as it works. OpenVIM anyone?

09/17/2008 UPDATE: I just added this screenshot from the Quickr Connector (v8.1). Notice anything?

re: Since MAPI-support has been removed, Notes should have a standard API to access email functions

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:36:48 +0000

Author: John Cawrey
Comment: I have the same issue with Olympus DSS player pro!

re: I wish the Productivity Editors could read Office 2007 files

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 03:56:12 +0000

Author: Gavin Bollard
Comment: I'm promoting this because I think it's needed but I'd recommend people use non-MS products instead of proprietary file formats. Unfortunately due to the short-sightedness of the ODF foundation;

{ Link }
{ Link }

They seem to have lost any chance they have of providing a standard file format. (who will trust the new format now?) .

So, I guess we need to support Office 2007 :-(

re: Since MAPI-support has been removed, Notes should have a standard API to access email functions

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 11:58:28 +0000

Author: Stuart Mcintyre
Comment: Surely the third party apps should just use the default email program on the Windows install, in the same way as a mailto link is called?

Notes Client / Other: For server-based replicas, when choosing File-Replication-Replicate-Replicate With Options.....

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:34:38 +0000

Author: Craig Wiseman
Tags: replication
Idea:

When I choose to replicate a server-based database, I wish Notes would default to ANY other server than the one I'm on. It may well guess wrong, but if it acts as it does now, it's always going to be 100% wrong.

May it should just pick the first server on the list that's NOT the current server?

Symphony / : I wish Symphony could read Office 2007 files

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:26:05 +0000

Author: Craig Wiseman
Tags: Office compatibility
Idea:

To allow us to really use them as replacments for Office, it seems to me like we'd need to be able to natively read/write:

Office 97-2007

Word Perfect 9 - 12

OpenOffice (not just ODF)

SmartSuite

re: I wish the Productivity Editors could read Office 2007 files

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 02:11:46 +0000

Author: Mika Heinonen
Comment: I would strongly recommend Office 2007 (and other Office versions too) users to upgrade to OpenOffice. Keeping up Microsoft's exotic formats gives really no business benefit to anyone.

re: Since MAPI-support has been removed, Notes should have a standard API to access email functions

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:40:25 +0000

Author: Craig Wiseman
Comment: @2 - Ideally yeah. Practially, there are thousands of apps that go by the older MS programming guidelines and use MAPI and such to work.
The point here is that's it a huge disincentive for using Notes if a lot (most?) of the 3rd part software you buy that works fine with Outlook doesn't work with Notes.
It's something that could be fixed. It's something that should be fixed.

re: Since MAPI-support has been removed, Notes should have a standard API to access email functions

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:36:21 +0000

Author: Stuart Mcintyre
Comment:

re: Since MAPI-support has been removed, Notes should have a standard API to access email functions

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:36:41 +0000

Author: Stuart Mcintyre
Comment: Fair comment Craig. Would love to know IBM's rationale for removing the MAPI support in the first place...

re: Since MAPI-support has been removed, Notes should have a standard API to access email functions

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 22:01:44 +0000

Author: Mika Heinonen
Comment: There are Standard APIs to support Notes mail functions: OLE/COM/C API. Of course C API works the best, but has longer development times. The Visual Basic COM interface is the easiest to program, but it has many bugs due to Microsoft Office. A pure Visual Studio Basic program overcomes those bugs. I suggest using Visual Basic 6, as newer versions of Visual Basic are crap, and lower the development time again.

re: I wish the Productivity Editors could read Office 2007 files

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:56:20 +0000

Author: Ben Langhinrichs
Comment: Gavin -

ODF is alive and well. As I have posted in a comment on another idea here, the OpenDocument Foundation (of which I was briefly a member) was down to three guys who simply fell apart. It has nothing to do with ODF's acceptance, and all the noise about even their plaintive whining has come from Microsoft and its supporters. It was stupid of OASIS to ever let the OpenDocument Foundation use the name, but they are in absolutely no way a mouthpiece for the standard or an indicator of its viability. I will repeat, ODF is alive, well and an international ISO standard being adopted at a great rate by companies and governments all over the world. We do not have to support Office 2007, and I don't think we should, beyond the already excellent support for the older binary formats, which let people interoperate easily. See { Link } for some sense about how widely spread the Open XML formats are "in the wild", and then compare

DOCX (Office 2007 standard document filetype): { Link }

ODT (ODF standard document filetype): { Link }

I get 883 .docx files and 90,200 .odt files, but even in the interest of interoperability with Office 2007, here is

.DOC (Office 2007 and before binary format, supported by Symphony): { Link }

28, 200,000 and growing

So, given these numbers, should IBM spend time supporting Open XML, and simply let people interoperate with what already works well?

- Ben

re: I wish the Productivity Editors could read Office 2007 files

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 16:20:48 +0000

Author: Craig Wiseman
Comment: @4 - This presupposes that it's an even playing field. It's not. My take on it is if you want to unseat the hugely entrenched champion of the field (M$ Office), then you have to be just as good (can read the same files as them) AND better. ODF is better, but IMHO, not better enough to outweigh the lack of full compatibility.

FWIW - I'm not making this up out of whole wool. I've sat with folks and tried to convince them to make the move, and this is the #1 complaint / issue they raise.

re: I wish the Productivity Editors could read Office 2007 files

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 17:24:01 +0000

Author: Ben Langhinrichs
Comment: @5 - You may be right, but I've also sat through IBM making OS/2 handle Windows programs "as well or better than Windows" and have all the developers realize they only had to develop Windows programs. Supporting .doc and .xls files supports the hugely entrenched champion office formats without further entrenching the hugely entrenched champion office provider. Just my opinion, of course.