Embedded Objects

HCL Domino Domino Forum
1

Right, I’ve spent the entire day trying to get this sorted and have acheived nothing except for scrambling my brain.

Here’s the situation. I have an application on a Domino server, accessed by Notes clients. There is no web access. When the user creates a new document using a particular form, the Auto Launch options create a new ‘Image Document’ (which uses the Windows/Kodak imaging software), stores it in a specified Rich Text field and launches it. The user then edits the image in the Imaging software.

When the user has finished editing the image, they close the Imaging software, returning them to Notes and updating the Notes document with the image they created. In Notes 5.08 the image is then displayed as an Icon in the rich text field, which is exactly what I want. However, in Notes 6, the image is displayed as if it were pasted into the rich text field. The ‘Display As’ option in the ‘Image Document’ properties is set to display it as a ‘Picture’.

This wouldn’t be a problem except Notes seems to take no care over the dimensions of the image, therefore it appears stretched and often runs off the side of the screen.

Obviously, the user can change these properties so that the image is displayed as an icon, but this is annoying firstly because it is extra work for the user who will be doing this over and over due to the nature of the application, and also even when it is set to display as an icon my table settings, alignment and formatting remain out of place.

I have tried creating the form so it already contains an embedded image, and then Auto Launching this existing image, but this seems to cause the final file size to be larger.

What can I do so that the file created when the form is launched is only ever displayed as an icon? I’m hoping that when I look at this again tomorrow the answer will pop magically into my head somehow, but any hints you can give me would be greatly appreciated!

Many thanks,

Emily.

P.S. I have read this through a couple of times but please let me know if it doesn’t make sense due to the previously mentioned scrambled brain.

2

Subject: Embedded Objects

I’ve just found something else which is irritating about the Image Document being created and displayed as a Picture rather than an Icon. When I do this in R5 and create an image, the file size ends up being sub 500k. When I create the same image in R6 the eventual file is not only always bigger than this, but also depends on the what window size/zoom level I was working at when i closed Windows Imaging and returned to Notes. For example, with the same image i created in R5 - if I’m working at a zoom of 11.2percent, the file size is almost 800kb, but if i’m working in a maximised window at 25.4percent zoom, the file size ends up being over a megabyte. The sizes stay this large, even if I change the properties to ‘Display as Icon’ before saving the Notes document.

I found a technote (#1095378, historical #159226) pertaining to R5 which discusses how ‘objects embedded via LotusScript are rendered initially as icons’. It looks like they have reversed this for ND6, but wouldn’t it be more to the point to allow the programmer complete control over it? It’s no more sensible to assume that all instances of embedded objects are best displayed as pictures, than it is to assume that they are all best displayed as icons.

This is a real problem for this application. We’re keen to upgrade fully to R6, but I don’t see any way I can upgrade the people who are going to be creating the images in this application, without being able to set the ‘Display as’ options in code, before the Image Document is created. Luckily, there will only be 2 users who will be image creators, but it still means this application will need to be kept at R5 level so we won’t be able to utilise any of the new features in Notes 6.

I would appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks,

Emily.