Carousel Blog

Regarding the JSON library. You write you would want to use SNAPPS. Why SNAPPS and not the one on openntf.org? What are the advantages?

The JSON library from OpenNTF.org (good eye spotting it!) is incomplete, and the author was very specific about it.

SNAPPS has recently released a JSON library for LotusScript that is under the Apache license, and it's apparently a lot more complete.


Why haven't you used it directly?

Just haven't had time yet.  The LotusScript side of the demo is ultimately up to the implementer anyway.  The CarouselConnector class is provided as an implementation example, not as the definitive way to work with the plugin.

Is native LotusScript support for JSON in 8.5 critical or do you think people can use the external libraries?

I don't think it's critical.  If you're asking me for LotusScript development priorities, I would submit RegEx as VASTLY more important.

You have a whole bunch of properties but I only see tellNotesSelectedUNID and tellCarouselSelectedJSON being used. What are the other ones for?

tellCarouselRequestedJSONFull and tellCarouselRequestedJSONSingle should be used in certain circumstances, when you are jumping around extensively in the graphical Carousel to image panes which have not yet been cached.

tellNotesDblClickUNID also works, although in the present implementation, it ONLY works on the pane that's in the center, because the SWT interface doesn't have an easy way to differentiate single vs. double click on a given graphic item.

Both components are basically kept in synch as to what they display. I saw that if you select another view entry the JSON property is published, then the UNID comes back and then the JSON property is published again. I assume that the logic you implemented is in the carousel: if you get JSON for entry that is already displayed don't do anything and don't publish UNID again right? Is that how you avoid endless loops?

That's part of the request/response mechanism between the Carousel plugin and the corresponding Notes view.  The Notes view obviously always has all the details it needs, but the Carousel tries to load image data in a just-in-time fashion.  Honestly, performance would be horrible if I were trying to use a more extensive pre-cache.

I couldn't find the Java code. Will you also make it available?

LOL.  No!  That's the commercial portion of what we'll ultimately offer.

I saw you removed certain design notes from the updatesite.ntf, e.g. forms for features and plugins. Which ones did you remove? By trial and error?

I talked to Thomas Gumz about what would be possible, and beyond that, reverse engineered the template.  The results will be part of the strategy we use for the "super catalog" project that you and I have talked about in the past.

I understand the use case that you want to pass all configuration to the carousel everytime the view entry selection changes.

Well, it passes all the context information about the related neighboring panes.  It's probably a lot more information than is needed, but to be honest, I didn't see a reason NOT to pass a comprehensive data set, since it's just through the property broker, rather than, say, a network transaction.

You could also store the configuration in the comp app configuration/ca xml.

Can I get a schema doc for the ca.xml? 

In CAE you can set these (static) advanced component properties and then access them via Java API in your Eclipse component:

So, yes, I actually do know how to do that, but I wanted to minimize the amount of configuration run from the CAE and move it to LotusScript when possible.  This is simply because Notes developers are typically WAY more familiar with LotusScript than they are with the CAE advanced properties.

I decided that the easiest and fastest way to track feedback for the Carousel plugin, and keep people abreast of what's going on with it, is to have a project blog.  For now, I'll be the only person adding entries, but as Lotus 911's success with Carousel continues, you can expect more people to contribute.