Markdown Wikis and GIT - almost genius but still lacking

Sean Cull  16 April 2013 07:29:30

I have been working away trying to develop some best practices for for source control with XPages using GIT - I will publish it all and invite comments soon.

I had a real "a ha" moment yesterday when I realised that you could have a wiki inside a GIT repository.

This means that your documentation can travel with your code to every developer who works on it.

This is genius and so simple. The same comments can be displayed in a browser from a server, by using a browser extension or by using a local client.
We have used the "Ben Poole Domino Wiki" and the IBM XPages wiki here for projects so I was really excited by this,

As I started looking for the best Markdown client ( markdown is the prevalent markup language in this context ) I kept finding that they were inefficient to use compared to my previous experience.

Here are they key points :

1) automatic draft pages

if I type [[user documentation]] in our current wikis I get a hyperlink with a + symbol. Clicking on this then creates a new page.
This is a huge efficiency boost and great for laying out the wiki for yourself or others to populate.

An ideal MD client would let you create a local page within the repo folder - even right clicking on the source and choosing "insert new page" would do. I can't understand why no MD client does this

2) image handling

most clients have no image handling capability. A few allow linking to an image and some will upload your image to the cloud and link to it there.
I just want it to COPY the chosen image into the repo folder structure and reference it there. That way every developer working on the code will see it.

3) folder ( repository ) representation of the MD wiki.

The problem with a wiki is not knowing what pages exist. I keep opening a file or GIT repository browser to navigate about.
Having a folder tree type representation of the files within the MD client would be brilliant.

4) Tables of Content

Maybe more of a markup capability thing than a client thing but creating a table of contents as you go is pretty powerful.

5) a Bitbucket specific comment

The wiki associated with a project is treated as a separate repository. You could put one inside your code repository but then it would not be rendered to the ui on the  Bitbucket site.


A wiki within a GIT repository is a brilliant idea. The markdown client segment seems to be thriving so hopefully someone will be able to address the above shortcomings soon :-)

p.s. until DDE comes to mac it needs to be a Windows MD client.

 Dev Tips  Lotus  Source Control 

Getting the XPage Extension Library name pickers to show more than 50 names

Sean Cull  23 March 2013 12:46:25

The Extension Library name pickers are really nice, especially when used to choose multiple people.
Out of the box they have a limitation in that they will only show 50 names.
You can find people using the search box but it is not very intuitive.

Thanks to Paul Hannan who showed me how to display more names using Dojo Attribute MaxRowCount







ref : xe:namePicker, maxRowCount



 XPages  Lotus 

New OpenNTF Project - Mail Delay Agent

Sean Cull  16 March 2013 20:26:39

Andrew Champion and I have just posted a new OpenNTF project called rather boringly Mail Delay Agent

It tries to solve the problem where people click on a doclink on and go to a different server before a workflow document has arrived there or been updated.



Rather than code this into every application you can sent it to a single mail-in database with the relevant parameters in the subject line.  
These are then parsed out and the email delayed accordingly.

This approach was taken because it makes it relatively easy to retrofit this scheme to older formula based workflow applications.

Subject and SendTo are required parameters in the subject line, the rest are optional.

Subject=Whatever you like~SendTo=joe.bloggs@focul.net,sean_smith@focul.net~CopyTo=jane.cully@focul.net,~BlindCopyTo=andrew.champ@focul.net~Delay=60

i.e.
Subject = anything
SendTo=  (comma delimited for multiple)
Copyto = (comma delimited for multiple)
BlindCopyTo = (comma delimited for multiple)
Delay =  (Integer Value)

separated by ~  (This is configurable and should be set as a keyword to what the system is expecting)

I have also started a git repository at Bit bucket

 Lotus  OpenNTF 

The free ( as in beer ) virtual machine you didn’t know you had

Sean Cull  16 March 2013 14:48:16

I use virtual machines a lot for testing. Under the MS licensing terms you need a licence for each guest OS ( unless you have an enterprise agreement in which case you get 4 for free ).

I love VMWare Desktop and we have plenty of licences but the process is a real pain because when I create a new VM M$ think it is another PC and the Windows genuine validation fails. Although I have the licences they are allocated to stopped VMs and MS gets annoyed when I try to re-use the keys.

Did you know that every Windows 7 machine ( well apart from home ones ) comes with an entitlement to an XP virtual image that runs on MS Virtual PC ( FREE ) and integrates nicely with your existing folders etc.. Its only 32 bit and it is XP but it is more than capable for testing, using 32bit VPNs and for running big agents whilst I get on with other stuff.

Windows XP Mode

Moreover it is not as fussy about the windows validation stuff and you can make copies and even run multiple copies although you will need a licence for each additional running instance after the first one.

Another nice feature is that the VMs are very compact because they share a common base VM.

Just what you need when playing with Notes 9 !

Update - modifying settings

you change the settings ( memory etc.. ) here :

From Windows 7 Start - type in "virtual PC" then select Virtual PC
Highlight the Virtual PC you want to modify
Note that you may need to shut it down fully first - use Ctrl + Alt + delete option to do this ( see below )

Made via my XP VM as Notes 9 Beta will not paste images into the Blog template :-)






 Lotus  dev 

SNTT : increasing the size of a VMWare Workstation 6 HDD

Sean Cull  15 March 2013 08:54:59

Just a very quick one and I believe this might actually be an option in the VMWare 7 UI

[ As an aside I would be interested to hear if anyone has any issues with virtual box at it is looking more and more appealing ]

> Close down the VM
> Remove the Snapshots
> make a note of the file paths
> run this command, or rather something similar to it to suit your needs

"C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmware-vdiskmanager.exe" -x 100GB "F:\W7 32bit MASTER\Windows 7 Prof.vmdk"

> Restart the VM
> Go to Computer Management
> right click as shown below and resize



Inspiration from http://www.partition-tool.com/resource/resize-vmware-virtual-disk-tutorial.htm  ( their tool is no longer needed in Windows 7 )

 Lotus VMWARE 

Recruiting for an XPage / Web / Notes Developer

Sean Cull  12 March 2013 09:53:11

We are recruiting for an capable, enthusiastic Developer with proven XPage and Java skills.
The job is based in the UK with the option of Home Working.

The role is a broad one which includes interfacing with clients, developing new applications and supporting existing applications.

Our focus going forward is firmly on XPages but there will be some support of existing Notes applications.

A proven track record in Open Source / Community / Blogging would be helpful.

If you are interested please see http://www.focul.net/careers

If you have any queries please reach out to me.

Thanks, Sean

 Lotus  Jobs 

If you want to use Google Maps in internal apps / intranets you need to pay ( a lot )

Sean Cull  11 March 2013 10:00:37

Just a word of warning.

I wanted to use the Google Maps API to display customer locations on a small CRM. I filled in the form on the Google site asking for details ( they do not appear to publish prices ).
I joked at the time about having to talk to a python script.

Well the python script rang me back 12 weeks later and informed me that it would be a minimum of GB 7,700 ( about 10K USD ).
When I explained it was for 5 users he said that they had no viable alternative.

Not what I was expecting and not a good impression of Google.

 Lotus  Google 

Voyager Legend UC is a significant improvement on the Voyager Pro UC

Sean Cull  3 March 2013 22:36:09

Volker's Post reminded me that I had been meaning to write about the Voyager Legend.



I got a Voyager Pro UC about 3 months ago to use a s a single unified device for PC and mobile. The idea was to use a voip client on my tablet but I am still struggling to make that bit work well.

I was reasonably pleased with the Voyager Pro but it was just "OK".

>The fancy sensor features didn't seem to work well with my Android tablet,
> It was a bit quiet and the buttons were fiddly.
> It also had a very short battery life because after using Skype it would stay connected tot he PC in a silent but active way that meant you were eating into the talk time battery allowance.
> I also REALLY hated trying to plug the micro usb plug in for charging.
> Every time I went to make a coffee or eat lunch in the kitchen it would announce connecting and disconnecting from my PC every few minutes.

When I think about it now perhaps I wasn't "OK" with it.

Anyhow, it went through the washing machine and although I was impressed that it seemed to recover it was never quite the same so I bought the newer Legend UC M. This is much better.

> It comes with a slightly quirky magnetic charging stand that is just brilliant.
> It has real physical buttons for the controls.
> It has a quirky case which holds a second battery capable of charging it twice over.
> The battery life is much much better as it now disconnects cleanly from Skype.
> It is louder than the Voyager
> It has a much better bluetooth range
> The voice controls seem to work better although an option to voice dial would be a big improvement while driving.

So there you go. If you are looking for a simple bluetooth ear piece to wear all day for Skype and phone I would highly recommend it.

 Hardware  Reviews  Lotus 

SNTT : Adding a redirect message to a HTTPS login when the url is changing

Focul Developer  28 February 2013 19:21:58

If there is a better way to do this then please tell me :-)

iNotes users have previously logged into a Domino server called inotes.acme.com. They always used HTTPS. The new domian for the server is email.biggeracme.com

So when users hit https://inotes.acme.com we want to give them a message and a hyper link saying "in future please use http://email@biggeracme.com"

Now if they were using http as opposed to https you could use a domino internet sites redirect rule that took users to a page with this message.

But because they are using the HTTPS protocol and there is only a single IP address for the server redirects do not work in this way.

Domino, as far as I understand, latches onto the first SSL enabled internet site document that it finds.

So... being a developer I hacked the Domino Web Access Redirect login form so that it uses a different sub form depending on the url

Users going to https://inotes.acme.com get this



Whereas users going to https://email.biggeracme.com get this




The trick was to add an extra field to the DWALoginForm form in iwaredir.nsf as shown below. This uses the cgi variables and captures the domain name.
So when the domain name contains inotes.acme.com the subform "message" is presented otherwise the standard subform is presented.



 Admin Tips  Lotus  Show-n-Tell Thursday 

Review - Samsung Note 10.1 tablet - fantastic for taking notes

Sean Cull  22 December 2012 13:59:09

I have wanted a tablet PC for years, in fact the strap line for this blog talks about living with a tablet PC.

The problem is that it never really worked for me. I would inevitably need to use my tablet laptop for both doing a demonstration or taking notes. I gave up on the tablet PC and decided to wait until I could have a device that was additional to my laptop,

The iPad came along but without a proper pen - as in a pen based on a digitiser - it didn't do what I wanted. It was great as a consumption device but not for note taking.

Then I got a Samsung Note 10.1 3G tablet about 2 months ago and I have been really pleased with it. It has a proper digitiser pen and the bundled Samsung Note software seems pretty good. I had hoped to use Evernote but this does not work with the stylus.

The tablet is running Android and is pretty good but it is definitely a flakier experience than the the iPad. Apps available for both iOS and Android seem less refined on the Android, the BBC iPlayer being a good example.

The stylus makes up for it though, it is a brilliant note taking device. There is some text recognition functionality but I am happy with just written notes.

There are options to send PDF copies of my notes to colleagues although it doesn't improve my handwriting or spelling :-(

I had hoped to use the tablet as my single unified work device and drop my traditional mobile but that is not really working out. I did get a Plantronics Voyager Bluetooth headset and while I am pleased with some aspects it has not been a brilliant success. I have ended up still having my traditional phone and directing my office number to both devices.

Positives

Continue Reading "Review - Samsung Note 10.1 tablet - fantastic for taking notes" »

 Tablets  Lotus 

Connect 2013 Podcasts

Sean Cull  15 December 2012 11:19:27

I have a dirty secret

With the lack of ICS / Lotus community podcasts I have begun to listen to SharePoint community podcasts - there I said it, its off my chest now - they say daylight is the best disinfectant.

And I actually really like them. This one is a crowd of MS MVPs ( a bit like IBM Champions ) reflecting on the state of SharePoint in a studio set aside for them by Microsoft at their equivalent of Connect.

The podcast is vibrant, positive but also realistic - people get to express concerns and worries but the overall impression is of a platform moving forward and creating great business value. While the podcasts are not formally endorsed by MS the relationship between MS and the MVPs seems to be a trusting one with MS providing a studio etc.

I think that the ICS community also has an equally positive story to tell and I think that they might be more effective at telling it to certain audiences than IBM.

Wouldn't it be great if there was something similar from Connect 2013 ? Does anyone already have stuff planned ? I would be up for trying to facilitate something if others are interested.

As to the state of SharePoint it seems to be an interesting time. As a business owner and trusted advisor to customers I would be negligent not to be knowledgeable about other options.
SharePoint is definitely maturing and is becoming both more Social and more App Centric. At the same time the Roadmap appears much less clear than the current IBM roadmap with respect to applications - this comes through very clearly from this and other podcasts.

As an ISV  / Development shop owner I would find this very worrying. With the IBM stack the ability to run applications from versions 4,5,6,7 and 8 on the most recent server without compatibility issues has been a God send for us and our customers.  I really can't imagine how we would manage to maintain the hundreds of bespoke applications we have written if changes were needed at every server upgrade.
 

 Lotus 

SNTT / Notesin9 - Installing Domino 8.5.3 UP1 FP3 on CentOS / RHEL 6.3 64 bit

Sean Cull  3 December 2012 09:00:00

I have just finished recording a video on Installing a Domino Sandbox on Linux for David Leedy at Notes in 9.

Update : David has now posted the video

The video should be posted in the next week or so. I have pitched it at developers with no experience of Linux and perhaps not much experience on Domino installs.

I would normally recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux but on this occasion I used CentOS because I wanted to provide the easiest possible path to a developer wanting to deploy a Domino sandbox.

Note that CentOS is not a supported platform and you will not be able to raise issues with IBM.

I also wanted to post the video because it includes a tip from Daniel Nashed that makes it possible to install Domino on 64 bit RHEL 6.x . The Domino install requires 32 bit libraries which I found next to impossible to install. Daniel suggested adding the following line to the etc/yum.conf file and it works a treat :

multilib_policy=all

The steps required are set out below, I will update this article with a link to the video when it is published.

Thanks again to David Leedy for the encouragement.

============================================================
Cheat Sheet -  Installing Domino 8.5.3 UP1 FP3 on CentOS / RHEL 6.3 64 bit
===========================================================

Produced by Sean Cull - http://www.seancull.co.uk / http://www.focul.net
Please see blog post at http://seancull.co.uk/cheatsheets/linux

**** This install is for a developer sandbox within a firewall.
**** It is not a hardened production server
**** No warranty of any kind whatsoever is provided

MAC users will want to use alternatives to Putty and WinSCP

================================================
Prerequisites
A real or virtual server with a minimal CentOS 6.x ( not supported by IBM ) or RHEL 6.x installed and the network configured
================================================


================================================
Once the OS is installed log in using Putty or similar
Makes copy / paste easier and is generally nicer
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
================================================


=====================================
RHEL ONLY - Subscribe to RHEL updates
=====================================

subscription-manager register
subscription-manager subscribe --auto

=====================================
Update OS
=====================================

yum update

==============================================================
Modify yum settings to retrieve 32bit dependencies for Domino
Use WinSCP as root
==============================================================

modify the file /etc/yum.conf to include multilib_policy=all

==============================
Install some useful utilities
==============================

yum install wget
yum install ntpdate
yum install system-config-net*
yum install system-config-firewall*

================
Disable Firewall
================

system-config-firewall

=======================
Change Network setting if required
======================

system-config-network

==================================
Check if a mail server is running
==================================

netstat -t -a | grep LISTEN

==================================
Check what services start at boot
==================================

chkconfig

==================================
disable sendmail
==================================

chkconfig --del sendmail

========================================
Install dependencies required by Domino
========================================

yum install perl glibc libgcc libXtst libXmu libXp libXft libXi libstdc++


====================================
Create a user and group called notes
Set password for this user
====================================

sudo useradd -m notes  
sudo passwd notes

=====================================
create a temporary folder for Notes installs
Give them short sensible names first
=====================================

mkdir /tmp/dom_installs

=======================================
upload install files to /tmp/dom_installs using WinsCP program or similar
http://sourceforge.net/projects/winscp/
=====================================

====================================
Change to the temporary folder
====================================

cd /tmp/dom_installs

====================================
unpack the domino install
this bit was missing from the video
====================================
tar -xvf dom_install_filename.tar

====================================
start the domino install
====================================
linux/domino/install

Accept the licence ( you should have one ) and all of the default responses except  :

"Server Setup"  should be [2] - Remote

=========================================
Launch the IBM Remote Server Setup Client
This is an OPTIONAL install as part of the Notes Administrator Client
It can be found Lotus Applications Folder ( Start > All Applications > Lotus Application )
=========================================

Finish the installation taking care to download the id files to windows
Make sure the HTTP server is selected
Deselect "Prohibit Anonymous Access"

Stop the listener task

=======================
Start the Domino server
=======================

change to Notes user

su notes

change to Notes Data Directory

cd/local/notesdata

start the server

/opt/ibm/lotus/bin/server

===================================================
Browse to the URL and confirm the server is working
You should see the help files
===================================================

===========================================
Shutdown the server and install UP1 and FP3
===========================================

Shutdown by typing quit

change back to root

su

change back to the install folder

cd /tmp/dom_installs

tar -xvf fp3.tar   ( or whatever you have called it )
cd linux/domino
../install
cd /tmp/dom_installs

remove directory

rm -rf /tmp/dom_installs/linux

remove the install folder

cd /tmp
rm -rf /tmp/dom_installs

====================================================
Install Daniel Nashed's Startup and shutdown scripts
http://www.nashcom.de/nshweb/pages/startscript.htm
Thank you Daniel
====================================================

Using WinSCP drop the 2 files into the locations in the readme
as root ....

cd /opt/ibm/lotus
chmod 755 rc_domino_script
cd /etc/init.d
chmod 755 rc_domino

Add Domino to the startup sequence

chkconfig --add rc_domino

Domino will now start and stop gracefully with the server.
The following commands are also available ( plus others )


/etc/init.d/rc_domino start live
/etc/init.d/rc_domino stop
/etc/init.d/rc_domino monitor


==================================================
Change ULimit Settings to stop warnings in console
Use WinSCP as root
==================================================

edit /etc/security/limits.conf to include the following lines
notes soft nofile 20000
notes hard nofile 49152

==================================================
Notes.ini settings
==================================================



==========================
Some useful Linux commands
==========================
reboot
halt
Ifconfig          IP address report
df –h                Disc space report
top                Resource usage report
netstat -tup netstat -t -a | grep LISTEN         List active connections to/from system
chkconfig        list services started at bootup
iptables -L -n -v          List firewall rules
rm -rf directory        delete a directory with files included
su notes        switch to the notes user

Update : SMTP troubleshooting

Some people have found that the Postfix smtp server was installed and is hogging Port 25
This is not showing up in the TCP check above
Disable this using chkconfig --del postfix




 Lotus  XPages  Linux 

[solved’ish] @getprofilefield not working in embedded outline computed backgrounds

Sean Cull  30 November 2012 14:37:59

Just a quick one for anyone getting an ECL / Notes Execution Alert from -No Signature- on -not known- with the action GetProfileField

This can come from using @getprofilefield for a "hide when" - which IBM has no plans to fix - http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21247497

or, as has taken me a while to discover, if you use profile fields to set the background colour on outlines which IBM may fix - http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg1LO45177

The workaround is to use @dblookup I suppose. If you do this then do not use the "nocache" option.

Update

I also had to edit the page using the DXL edit option to remove some references that were not visible in the UI - use the right click "edit with DXL" option in the design element tree - not something to be done willy nilly.




 Lotus 

[Solved] Black screen on bootup for Windows 7 VMWare Fusion Bootcamp VM when using displaylink USB drivers

Sean Cull  22 November 2012 21:51:23

This is a quick post to hopefully remind me of how I fixed this problem once I forget,

Background

We are moving to using Bootcamp on our Macs so as to get the full power of the Mac for the Domino Designer client, it makes a big difference but I will post more on that later.

On the Mac I use a Displaylink USB adapter to power one monitor while the other is plugged directly into the Mac - why Mac haven't sussed sub 27" multi-monitor working baffles me but hey, I'm only the customer.

Because the same partition is used for a native machine and as a virtual machine you are stuck with the same drivers for both instances. The Displaylink USB drivers are needed for the native W7 instance but cause a clash with VMWare Tools drivers in the virtual instance.

USB Adapter : Rexton VCUD-20
Displaylink version driver ( via Rexton ) 6.3.40660.0 dated 30/7/2012 and downloaded automatically via MS update
VMWare Fusion version 5.01
Windows 7 Ultimate
Mountain Lion 10.7.5

Symptoms

All is fine until you install VMWare Tools. Once you reboot you are presented with a black screen. The welcome chimes still sound but there is no way to see the screen. Using the VNC option does not help.

You can boot into safe mode using F2 and you can the use the display but I couldn't find a way to salvage the situation. As I had a very recent backup I rolled back to that.

While trying to find a solution I did find that if you set a Windows restore point then you can roll back to that restore point from safe mode, there may even be a default one, I never thought to look at the time.

Solution

The problem can be resolved by selecting not to install the SVGA drivers when you install VMWare Tools using the custom install option. I am not sure if this has any negative impact.

As Displaylink say that they do not support virtualised machines at all it is hard to know what is meant to work and what is not.

You can still use Unity although I cannot drag Unity windows between monitors - you can get them to other monitors by going full screen on that monitor and then going to Unity.

Other Notes

The Displaylink release notes do hint that some issues have been resolved by apple in the latest Mountain Lion release notes. I will not be upgrading to Lion until Q1 next year for work reasons so I am not sure.



 Lotus 

A Fresh Insight from a User Group

Sean Cull  7 September 2012 09:00:00

Almost all of the people reading this love their User Groups. For us it is a chance to meet old friends and reaffirm our belief in the products that we build our work around.

I was at the fantastic UKLUG this week but this time it was a different experience for me.  I was lucky enough to be there with a new colleague from outside the ICS community who will be joining our company in November.

Although Jane has been a very IT literate Lotus Notes user for 15 years she is a "Line of Business User" to use the Jargon. She is a business user trying to work as efficiently as she can to manage her priorities and get her work done to the best of her ability.

Two things really struck her :

1) How friendly and welcoming everyone was.

2) The power of IBM Connections.

To be fair I have been slow to push Connections awareness to our customers. We have traditionally worked within the infrastructure that people have had in place. I had thought that these "Social" tools would be some way down my customers priority lists and that the barriers to deployment were too steep at the moment.

It could well be that this is still the case but Jane's very positive reaction to IBM Connections as a potential business user has made me stop and think.

I am not sure how we can get the message out to Line of Business users but Simon Vaughan's work with the Students at Cardiff is certainly an inspiring example and is hopefully converting a few graduates along the way.

Thanks to Warren Elsmore ,his team, the sponsors and the speakers for a great event.


 Lotus