Windows isn't done until Notes won't run
just read an email published on Groklaw from Bill Gates
From: Bill Gates
To: Bill Bass; Bob Muglia; Brad Silverberg; Brad Struss; Brian MacDonald; Chris Guzak; Chris Peters; Darryl Rubin; Doug Henrich; Erik Gavriluk; Jim Allchin; Joe Belfiore; Kurt Eckhardt; Leif Pederson; Mike Koss; Paul Maritz; Russell Siegelman; Satoshi Nakajima; Steve Madigan; Tom Evslin
Cc: Brian Fleming
Subject: Shell plans – iShellBrowser
Date: Monday, October 3, 1994 5:18PMIts time for a decision on iShellBrowser.
This is a tough decision. The Chicago team has done some great work in developing a user interface that will be a big step forward for millions of people. The explorer is an important part of this because it provides a neat paradigm for finding interesting information. The shell group did a good job defining extensibility interfaces. It is also very late in the day to making changes to Chicago and Capone.
It is hard to know how much actual market benefit iShellBrowser integration would bring. I believe Chicago will be very successful either way. Unfortunately I don’t think the integration will have a marked effect in terms of Capone competing with cc:Mail, so that battle will have to be won on other grounds. This is not to say that there was anything wrong with the extensions – on the contrary they are a very nice piece of work.
On the other hand, we are in a real struggle vs. Notes and the Office/REN team needs to move as quickly as they can to deliver really rich, unified views of information and to provide and exploit storage unification as systems makes that possible, and we need as clear as path as possible to allow them to do that. The Ren team has a lot of challenges and compatibility would be an extra effort for them of at least 5 men years. If we felt we could expand this team easily to help Office, beat Notes, be a source of future shell technology and be compatible then I would say the extensions are ok. However the Ren team will find it tough to deliver on all of these even without compatibility.
I have decided that we should not publish these extensions. We should wait until we have a way to do a high level of integration that will be harder for the likes of Notes, Wordperfect to achieve, and which will give Office a real advantage. This means that Capone and Marvel can still live in the top level of the Explorer namespace, but will run separately. We can continue to use the iShellBrowser APIs for MS provided views such as control panel, and can use them for other MS-provided views that don’t create a large compatibility or ISV issue.
I would also like to add a few words about the recent Shell re-organization. We have done from three centers of UI innovation to two. There is a lot of pain in doing this. All 3 groups were doing excellent work and I hope the Cairo shell and Ren can come together to provide the best of both. I think there will be real benefits to be reaped. Having the Office team really think through the information intensive scenarios, and be a demanding client of systems is absolutely critical to our future success. We can’t compete with Lotus and Wordperfect/Novell without this. Our goal is to have Office ‘96 sell better because of the shell integration work, and to have the Ren/Office effort yield technology that can be an integral part of the shell in Windows ‘97. I look forward to the Office team getting excited about using Component Forms, OLE automation, OFS, etc. in the future – and pushing systems much harder than before.
The Personal Systems team has many challenges ahead of it – they need to remain focussed on overall systems ease of use, and on being the conscience of the individual/home user – on thinking through integration of new opportunities opened by the Internet, by CD-ROM titles, etc. This means that we are going to have to work together and deal with tensions as they arise, but we can’t give up on either market, and there is a huge amount of creative work to be done. We need to allow for innovation in both Office and Windows, even if this makes the line between them hard to draw.
More stats and thoughts
Today was a little more lively than yesterday on nakedcomputers.org. So far there have been 2698 unique visitors (nearly 4 times the highest count I have ever seen on any planetlotus.org entry), most of them arriving from the home page of Linuxtoday.com so again a non-random sample. There is clearly a lot of windows XP still out there, but Ubuntu is close behind, with about 4 times the Vista numbers. I also had several people asking for their stores to be listed.
Firefox continues to be the leading browser by a country mile at 75% market share. IE7 and Iceweasel have been trading places for 3rd and 4rd with it being a draw at the moment.
So what does this say? Game over for Microsoft? Well not really. This is a really skewed sample. I think what it tells me is that I am talking to a bubble again. The Software Freedom bubble. Thats OK, I am used to operating in a bubble environment. This is just a much bigger bubble and it is growing fast.
| Visits | |
|---|---|
| 5192 |
69%
|
| 1380 |
18.3%
|
| 555 |
7.4%
|
| 399 |
5.3%
|
O.S.
| Visits | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1978 |
31.4%
|
|
| 1674 |
26.6%
|
|
| 1273 |
20.2%
|
|
| 444 |
7%
|
|
| 297 |
4.7%
|
|
| 256 |
4.1%
|
|
| 173 |
2.7%
|
|
| 77 |
1.2%
|
|
| 54 |
0.9%
|
|
| 34 |
0.5%
|
|
| 17 |
0.3%
|
|
| 9 |
0.1%
|
|
| 7 |
0.1%
|
|
| 4 |
0.1%
|
|
| 1 |
0%
|
|
| 1 |
0%
|
Browser
| Visits | ||
|---|---|---|
| 4723 |
74.7%
|
|
| 244 |
3.9%
|
|
| 212 |
3.4%
|
|
| 212 |
3.4%
|
|
| 173 |
2.7%
|
|
| 167 |
2.6%
|
|
| 128 |
2%
|
|
| 123 |
1.9%
|
|
| 92 |
1.5%
|
|
| 65 |
1%
|
|
| 59 |
0.9%
|
|
| 38 |
0.6%
|
|
| 24 |
0.4%
|
|
| 17 |
0.3%
|
|
| 16 |
0.3%
|
|
| 13 |
0.2%
|
|
| 6 |
0.1%
|
|
| 3 |
0%
|
|
| 2 |
0%
|
|
| 2 |
0%
|
|
| 2 |
0%
|
|
| 2 |
0%
|
|
| 1 |
0%
|
|
| 1 |
0%
|
more stats
overall a much quieter day today, but I think it will ramp up again.
| Visits | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1380 |
59.7%
|
|
| 534 |
23.1%
|
|
| 399 |
17.3%
|
O.S.
| Visits | ||
|---|---|---|
| 672 |
39.9%
|
|
| 348 |
20.7%
|
|
| 206 |
12.2%
|
|
| 183 |
10.9%
|
|
| 107 |
6.4%
|
|
| 84 |
5%
|
|
| 41 |
2.4%
|
|
| 15 |
0.9%
|
|
| 14 |
0.8%
|
|
| 6 |
0.4%
|
|
| 6 |
0.4%
|
|
| 1 |
0.1%
|
Browser
| Visits | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1281 |
76%
|
|
| 67 |
4%
|
|
| 65 |
3.9%
|
|
| 58 |
3.4%
|
|
| 45 |
2.7%
|
|
| 36 |
2.1%
|
|
| 31 |
1.8%
|
|
| 22 |
1.3%
|
|
| 21 |
1.2%
|
|
| 20 |
1.2%
|
|
| 20 |
1.2%
|
|
| 10 |
0.6%
|
|
| 3 |
0.2%
|
|
| 3 |
0.2%
|
|
| 1 |
0.1%
|
|
| 1 |
0.1%
|
|
| 1 |
0.1%
|
Todays stats for nakedcomputers.org
Well today and yesterday cumulative. There was a traffic burst from stumbleupon and from Groklaw. IE 7 was at one time browser number 5 after Konqueror, Chrome and Firefox 2 and 3. A late surge saw it creep past FF2 into a distant second place. Interestingly the operating system has still got XP in the lead, followed by Ubuntu then Vista.
Top days
| Visits | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1332 |
76.9%
|
|
| 399 |
23.1%
|
O.S.
| Visits | ||
|---|---|---|
| 539 |
42.4%
|
|
| 228 |
18%
|
|
| 184 |
14.5%
|
|
| 120 |
9.4%
|
|
| 78 |
6.1%
|
|
| 52 |
4.1%
|
|
| 40 |
3.1%
|
|
| 12 |
0.9%
|
|
| 7 |
0.6%
|
|
| 6 |
0.5%
|
|
| 3 |
0.2%
|
|
| 1 |
0.1%
|
Browser
| Visits | ||
|---|---|---|
| 992 |
78%
|
|
| 48 |
3.8%
|
|
| 45 |
3.5%
|
|
| 37 |
2.9%
|
|
| 31 |
2.4%
|
|
| 28 |
2.2%
|
|
| 20 |
1.6%
|
|
| 19 |
1.5%
|
|
| 17 |
1.3%
|
|
| 12 |
0.9%
|
|
| 8 |
0.6%
|
|
| 8 |
0.6%
|
|
| 3 |
0.2%
|
|
| 1 |
0.1%
|
|
| 1 |
0.1%
|
|
| 1 |
0.1%
|
Self selecting sample, but Firefox dominates
I am not sure this means a vast amount, the sample set is just “the first 66 people who give a toss what Alan says”, but I was struck by the total dominance of Firefox. The numbers don’t add up because of search engine spiders.
Quickr #fail with dd/mm/yyyy
The latest Quickr bug I hit. posting here because I think more IBMers read Planet Lotus than the partner forum.
Steps to Reproduce:
- Set up server and client correctly running in dd/mm/yyyy date format, as per normal in the UK
- Create documents in a Quickr place at various dates in the month, some before the 12th, some after the 12th.
- Observe correct creation dates for all documents in the view.
- Open the documents and observe apparently correct dates for dd<=12
- Observe incorrect dates in 2010 or 2011 for dd>12 such as 25/03/2009 turning into 01/03/2011
in the URL bar type
javascript:alert(QuickrDateUtil.convertStringToDate(“25/03/2009″)
and in the alert box you will see the wrong date.
Now, to shift the blame away from Quickr for just a second (don’t worry it will go back), try this one
javascript:alert(new Date(“25/03/2009″))
So Javascript itself is generating the odd date. There is some logic to it, but not much. If you consider 25/03/2009 to be in mm/dd/yyyy format then it is interpreting this to mean the third day of the twenty fifth month of 2009. Which is January 2011.
So the Quickr code in QuickrCommon.js QuickrDateUtil.convertStringToDate starts by passing the date as a string to Javascript to parse by creating a new Date object. If the returned object has a year component then convertStringToDate just returns the date that javascript parsed, even if it is mad.
So why do dates dd<=12 seem to work? Well they hit exactly the same bug when Javascript mis-creates the date object. For example if the document created date is 09/03/2009 then at line 7110 of the document opened through the qpbase form dCreated will be set to something like Thu Sep 03 2009 18:34:41 GMT+0100 (GMT) as it interpreted the date backwards. Then we move on to QuickrDateUtil.getDateTimeString which then uses DoJo to format the date in mm/dd/yyyy format thereby swapping it back again (two wrongs make a right). Quickr passes the locale of “en” to DoJo but not the date pattern of dd/mm/yyyy therefore DoJo uses the default locale date pattern for en which is mm/dd/yyyy (in something like /dojo/trunk/cldr/nls/en/gregorian.js)
So Javascript new Date(string) does not use the locale information, it uses ISO date format and others including mm/dd/yyyy, it will never use dd/mm/yyyy because something formatted as dd/mm/yyyy can always be interpreted as mm/dd/yyyy if mm is permitted to be more than 12.
Quickr javascript fails to account for this and also uses DoJo to format the displayed date in mm/dd/yyyy format thereby masking the problem where dd<=12.
(whilst you are on a tour of Quickr Javascript libraries be sure to visit qp_write_html.js and check the comment on line 491)
Work Around:
maybe patch the QuickrCommon.js file to correctly parse the date, that would leave everything in American format though. At least the dates would be understandably wrong. One could then patch the DoJo en locale file to put it in dd/mm/yyyy format. Really IBM need to recode it to correctly parse the date and correctly pass the date pattern to DoJo’s gregorian calendar handling routines.
This would appear to be a regression introduced between QPBuild=20080317.1550 and QPBuild=20080407.1630
Now this is a crazy dialog box
I am used to confusing and infuriating and just plain wrong dialog boxes, I have been conditioned to them over the years, as I suspect have you. Bet you haven’t seen one like this though, from the very clever Jigsaw download tool, the command line version of which is currently getting a nightly alpha build of Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope for me.
I clicked on “Awesome!” which is a word that only really works properly when said with an American accent.
Notes 8.5 on Intel Atom (lpia architecture)
IBM really don’t seem to get how to do software for Linux. The current process is to download a tar file and extract a .deb from it (which is like putting a .zip inside a .zip) and then install it as a standalone deb so you have to manage your own updates. The right way to do it is for IBM to host a repository. Really IBM it isn’t hard and here are the instructions. Downloading stuff from websites to install is something that Windows users do, it is an obsolete process. Anyhow, error 2 in the packaging is that it is only targeted at the i386 platform (which is nearly all the 32 bit intel architecture processors from the 386 onwards). Intel are now pushing the Atom processor for laptops which isn’t i386, although it is somewhat similar. The Atom is an lpia chip, (Low Power Intel Architecture) which is sufficiently different that the Debian package management safety features will try to prevent you running an i386 application on a kernel compiled for the lpia processor.
Enter the Dell Mini9 with Ubuntu linux pre-installed and an lpia kernel. This doesn’t point at the i386 repos, it has a separate repo for lpia. Try installing IBM’s .deb file for Notes and you will find gdebi stops you because the architecture is wrong. There are a few ways to get round it, but the right solution is for IBM to put up repos with builds optimised for the different processors. In the mean time you can use the command line to force the package manager to install the i386 version on the wrong architecture as shown below on a Japanese Ubuntu Mini9 laptop:
shouichi@shouichi:/media/disk/C1W0TEN$ sudo dpkg --force-architecture -i ibm_lotus_notes-8.5.i586.deb
[sudo] password for shouichi:
dpkg - 警告、--force が有効なので、問題を無視します:
パッケージアーキテクチャ (i386) がシステム (lpia) と一致しません
未選択パッケージ ibm-lotus-notes を選択しています。
dpkg: ibm_lotus_notes-8.5.i586.deb の処理中にエラーが発生しました (--install):ストールされています。)
buffer_write(fd) で失敗しました (10, ret=-1): `./opt/ibm/lotus/notes/xmlschemas/domino_7_0_2.xsd' 間の dpkg-deb バックエンド: No space left on device
The install still failed on this machine because it ran out of disk space on the 4GB flash drive. Next task is to mount an SD card as /opt and install to the external storage.
word of the day – Deportalisation
or deportalization for the American contingent I suppose. One of my clients has a deportalisation project going on. I am not involved, but it was a new word to me so I had to share it. This isn’t a Websphere portal or anything relevant to Lotus technology at all, but I think it might be an interesting new trend for people who have invested in a portal strategy who now find that the components are not best of breed solutions any more and tighter integration between applications makes them hard to individually upgrade.
