Genii Weblog


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


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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Mon 23 Apr 2007, 11:07 PM
You know the commercials, but knowing the truth behind the message "Life comes at you fast® " doesn't make it any less true.  It seems like yesterday, or maybe the day before, ant not three years ago, that I was writing about my daughter going to prom (and being filmed by ABC at the same time), but you would have to know my daughter to understand).  Today, my son happened to mention that he was going to prom.  He is a junior, so it was a bit more unexpected, and he is a whole lot less interested in attention, so the challenge will be getting photos of him at all, much less on national television.  Still, it is hard to believe it is possible.  Where did the time go?

Copyright © 2007 Genii Software Ltd.

Sat 21 Apr 2007, 10:10 AM
Shaker Heights is an inner ring suburb, but it still a fairly bucolic place, and it doesn't take a great naturalist or sleuth to look outside and see rabbits.  It is not uncommon to find rabbits nibbling at your plants with impunity, because what you won't find in Shaker Heights, no matter how early you rise, is rabbit hunters.  Rabbits may not watch much television, but they seem fully aware that should an irate gardener do a "Mr. Mcgregor" and trap or shoot a particularly rapacious rabbit, the neighbors and community associations and the lawyers who practically line the streets around here would be on that gardener with writs and desists and so on faster than the Warner Brothers directors and animators would be on Elmer Fudd if he should ever actually, even accidentally, hit the beloved Bugs Bunny.

And without the steady depletion of the rabbit population by irate gardeners, there is an even more steady rise in the population of said rabbits due to rabbits doing what rabbits do, which is to say the hedges around here must be like the Playboy Mansion the night after the Viagra delivery comes in the mail, where Holly, Bridget and Kendra play a clever game called Hugh's Clues in which they try to remind the increasingly senile Mr. Hefner why exactly he took the little blue pill, all the while keeping him from lighting the cigar poking out from his smoking jacket and trying to stay within the time limit (caution: if a painful erection persists for more than four hours, please contact a physician).

Where was I going with this post again?

Copyright © 2007 Genii Software Ltd.

Thu 19 Apr 2007, 11:55 PM
Ed Brill had a post yesterday asking, basically, do we want Lotus offerings to be simpler (yes, he asked in terms of SMB, but the questions doesn't need to be that complicated).  So far, there are 152 comments, and while I don't have time to read them all, the consensus seems to be, "Yup!"

But rather than chiming in, I thought I'd go with visuals.  Look at the two pages below.  Guess which one had its profits soar 70% in the past quarter.  Guess which one had its profits drop 12%.  What is the difference you see?  (Yes, I'm oversimplifying.  That is the point, right?)

Google home page

Yahoo home page

Copyright © 2007 Genii Software Ltd.

Wed 18 Apr 2007, 12:19 PM
As I work more and more extensively with the productivity editors in Notes/Domino 8 (mostly for our OpenSesame tools), a linguistic obstacle keeps hampering my documentation and internal discussions.  It appears that the productivity editors have been renamed as Lotus Documents, Lotus Presentations and Lotus Spreadsheets, although inside Notes 8, they will still just appear as Documents, Presentations and Spreadsheets.  But what should we call the Documents document to prevent confusion with a Notes document?  If you saw a method entitled CopyDocument, would you assume a Notes document or a Lotus Documents document?  What about an EmbedSpreadsheetInDocument?

It is possible we could refer to these as ODF Documents, but nowhere is ODF mentioned in the Notes 8 product, in the productivity editor Help or anywhere else I can find.  In fact, OpenDocument format is not mentioned either.  Of course, there are lots of hits for "Open Document", but they all point back to the discussion at hand, as they have nothing to do with Lotus Documents.

Perhaps we should refer to these as Office Documents, but that might confuse people who are used to Microsoft Office being referred to as just "Office".  (It is nice being the dominant leader, isn't it?)  Similarly, we could use "WP Document", but only if we use it in menus and such, as otherwise it will still sound like something external, maybe even a "WordPerfect Document" or "WordPro Document", either of which would cause more confusion.

We can hardly say a "Lotus Document", as that could be used interchangeably with "Notes document".  I guess we could say "Productivity Editor Document", or just "Productivity Document", but that sounds pretty awkward, and will certainly blow up those method names.  Imagine EmbedProductivitySpreadsheetInProductivityDocument.  Ick!

So, what should we call these?  If we come up with a good enough name, I can pound on Mary Beth Raven and others and see if we can get them to use it, but it has to be reasonably short and reasonably clear.  Any ideas?

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Fri 13 Apr 2007, 11:54 AM
We are close to releasing CoexEdit 2.0, but since we have extended FCKeditor, there are a number of strings which I wish I could have translated so that specific customers who use different language versions were better served.  I might be able to hire someone, but it is only a few lines in each language, and some specific Notes terms, so it is not conducive to a normal translation service, and I really don't want to depend on the freebie translations.  Anybody who wants to volunteer would be gratefully acknowledged here.

These are all entries in the FCKLang JavaScript files, so it is only the quoted material I need translated.

// Doclink Dialog (added for CoexEdit)
DlgDoclinkTitle         : "Doclink Properties",
DlgDoclinkUNID       : "Document UNID for Doclink",
DlgDoclinkUpload     : "Upload",
DlgDoclinkAlt        : "Alternative Text",
DlgDoclinkAlertUrl      : "Please browse the database for the doclink Universal ID",
DlgBtnBrowseDatabase    : "Browse Database",

// File Dialog (added for CoexEdit)
DlgFileTitle         : "File attachment Properties",
DlgFileURL        : "Local file path",
DlgFileUpload        : "Upload",
DlgFileAlt        : "Alternative Text",
DlgFileAlertUrl         : "Please type the local file path or browse to find the file",
DlgBtnBrowseLocal       : "Browse Local",

DlgLnkTypeDoclink       : "Notes doclink",               // Added for CoexEdit

The most important languages I need as soon as possible are German, Italian and French, but the following dialog gives the full list of languages supported by FCKeditor 2.4.2.  I guess that wherever I don't have a proper translation, I'll use English as being better than undefined strings.

Language files

Thank you in advance!  I'll keep an up to date list of translations sent to me separately so nobody needs to waste time.

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