Month: December 2007

New Sametime 8.0 Toolkit

The Sametime 8 SDK ships with a new toolkit called the Helper toolkit. The following is from the Sametime 8 SDK overview (Sametime_SDK_Overview.pdf).

“The Sametime Helper Toolkit is an API that provides an external interface to basic functionality of the Lotus Sametime Client. The Sametime Helper Toolkit is not intended to directly extend the capabilities of the Sametime Client. This toolkit differs from other Sametime client toolkits by providing an external interface to basic functionality exposed in the locally running desktop Lotus Sametime Client application. Applications that integrate the Sametime Helper API are essentially able to proxy the functionality of the locally running Sametime Client (Managing contacts, Starting chats, Alert notifications).”

Highlights of the Sametime Helper Toolkit

The Sametime Helper Toolkit exposes the following basic functionality of the Sametime Client:

  • Contact Management, Query, and Notification
  • Chat session initiation
  • Instant Share initiation

Deprecations

Be sure to review the API_Changes.txt file in the client/connect/doc directory of the SDK for changes in the public API.

YellowSphere

“Have you ever find out that you spent 3 days in something that could be done in 3 hours? Or maybe you just missunderstood some part of the documentation? Well, this space is created to avoid that. The main goal is to have a repository or Configurations, Workarounds and Technotes of the Lotus and WebSphere brands but from the user side. Documentation is the base, experience is the key.”

YelloSphere

Procedural vs. OO in Notes/Domino Java

In a comment to my “Is the lack of Java adoption *still* the Achilles’ heel of IBM?” post, Charles Ross has an interesting comment (emphasis *not* mine).

“I tend to learn by stealing and modifying/refactoring code. This is one kind of reuse. Most of the Java examples you find in the Lotus venues (LDD, Notes help, Sandbox, magazines etc) are not object oriented – not even structured. You can actually find more Lotuscript object oriented samples than Java ones. And at least in LS, the use of Subroutines is common practice in the Lotus templates. That’s good stuff to steal.

That lack of Domino Java source examples is a sore point. One OO thing I worked with was I mapped the Headfirst design patterns Ducks classes (Strategy pattern example) into a Notes Library and agent. Not quite coding, but educational.

So what we need is some nice Domino application classes to steal, basically.”

Something to think about… Maybe it’s because code in Java is so convoluted and hard to read due to the way the program flow may not be obvious that it’s easier to post Java snippets than full “programs”. Maybe this means that the posted code doesn’t lend itself to easy “stealing”. Hmm…

New screenshot tool in Sametime 8

Adam Gartenberg shows how the screenshot tool in Sametime 8 Standard can be used outside of an active chat. What have been a bit disappointing so far was the lack of additional annotations once the image had been captured (see my previously post called “A bit disappointed with Sametime 7.5.1 screen capture annotations“).

So what I’m really excited about is that Adam came through for me/us. The tool now supports more annotation tools than simply freehand drawing. Now the tool supports annotations such as drawing shapes, arrows and setting the color. See the top of the two last screenshots in Adams post.

Localized versions of Notes 8 standard

For customers using languages other than English, French German or Japanese. A MUI install is necessary to get support for other languages. For more see the following post on Ed Brills blog (includes link to actual technote). For those speaking Spanish please read the comments on Eds blog as it could be that Spanish will be added to the mix.

Notes Client Multilingual User Interface (MUI) functionality changes for Notes 8.x