SearchDomino: Lotus Notes plug-in for Linux heads up busy day for IBM at LinuxWorld

August 9 2005

SearchDomino has additional texture to today's LinuxWorld announcements...

Included is a plug-in that will allow Linux desktop customers to access their Notes and Domino systems with a simple double-click and run their existing Notes and Domino applications in a Workplace Managed Client environment, including those running on Linux. A beta of the Notes plug-in for Linux will also be available in Q3, with general availability planned for the first half of 2006.

"There's a lot of pent-up demand for a full Notes client as an offering for Linux," Ken Bisconti, vice president of IBM's Workplace, Portal and Collaboration products, told SearchDomino.com by phone from LinuxWorld in San Francisco. Although IBM has previously offered Web browser access for mail and calendar in a Linux desktop environment, "we have never had a full Notes client running in all its glory on a Linux operating system," he said.

"By supporting the full Notes client on Linux, a whole new set of Linux customers who want the full Notes experience now have the ability to run applications offline," Bisconti said. A similar product was previewed at Lotusphere 2005.
Link: SearchDomino: Lotus Notes plug-in for Linux heads up busy day for IBM at LinuxWorld >

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Notes/Domino 7  Add/View Comments [12]

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  1. 1  tonyo  | 8/9/2005 3:27:15 PM

    How does this work? Is IBM licensing a set of the WINE API's to do the Windows API emulation or something else?

  1. 2  Wild Bill http://www.billbuchan.com | 8/9/2005 4:31:38 PM

    Ah -your missing the point. The notes plug-in is basically the notes client stripped of its user interface, and plugged into the workplace rich client.

    The announcement that the linux plug in is coming means that you can now run Lotus Notes apps natively (via the linux plug in) on the linux rich client.

    ---* Bill

  1. 3  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 8/9/2005 4:44:25 PM

    Bill's right, the point is that the Eclipse/Workplace client technology framework take care of providing the platform-specific environment, and the Notes porting work lets Notes hook into those.

  1. 4  tonyo  | 8/9/2005 11:42:42 PM

    ok.. just to be sure..

    So if the notes client makes a WIN32 API call to do something like open a window does then an Eclipse handler captures the API and does the passthru to the platform dujour?

    Is there more of a technical description somewhere? ( this is not a devious way of getting competitive information -since I work for Microsoft. As an ex-loti I'm just curious as hell how the thing is put together.)

  1. 5  Jeroen Jacobs http://www.sith.be | 8/10/2005 6:17:51 AM

    Hi,

    I'm also interested on how this Notes plugin will handle the Windows API calls.

    I'm almost famous for abusing Windows API calls in my Notes databases :-)

    Greetings,

    Jeroen Jacobs

  1. 6  Higs  | 8/10/2005 9:02:01 AM

    I would suspect that it will only handle native Notes API calls. I would not expect it to handle any applications that used Win32 API calls in their code.

  1. 7  Ron King http://tisgarplen.blogspot.com | 8/10/2005 9:19:03 AM

    From "MS Exchange Blog" ({ Link }

    Star Developers Join Exchange Team

    "The Microsoft Exchange team has brought aboard two highly-respected developers known for their expertise in collaboration software. Julio Estrada, a former star at Lotus Development who went on to found Kubi Software, has joined the Exchange Server team, sources said. Also joining Microsoft is Bob Congdon, who was at IBM till recently..... The company (Microsoft) seems to be trying to boost Exchange Server's profile both inside and outside of company under vice president Dave Thompson, who took the reins late last year."

    ...My personal thoughts:

    what does it say about Lotus Notes? That microsoft is hiring people with major LN backgrounds to work on their collaboration software just proves: When you want to beat the best, you have to hire the best

  1. 8  Wild Bill http://www.billbuchan.com | 8/11/2005 3:24:01 AM

    My understanding (which may be very faulty) of the "plug-in", is that they've taken the core Notes client code and sheared off all UI calls, leaving say 90% of the core notes client. The workplace client then makes "standard" calls to this "plug-in", and handles all the UI.

    (Note: I'm plucking the 90% figure out of the air here. I have no idea if its 95%, 85%, 30% or whatever. And lets face it, who cares ? It works, is what we care about)

    The plug-in itself is still millions of C-API code, and is still very platform specific. So for instance, the win32 notes client+plug-in gets developed first, then the Mac client+plug-in, and now the linux plig-in.

    Think of it as (say) 90% of a native linux Notes client, wrapped in J2EE goodness..

    ---* Bill

  1. 9  Wild Bill http://www.billbuchan.com | 8/11/2005 3:29:27 AM

    Oh - and yes - if your code currently makes w32 calls in windows, you'll have to port that to something generic or customise per platform. As you would have done had it been a piece of back-end code and running on different platform servers. Or if one of your clients decided to run Mac clients instead of Windows.

    ---* Bill

  1. 10  Jeff Eisen  | 8/11/2005 11:03:32 AM

    Actually, none of the guesses above are really correct.

    First of all, the plug-in does NOT use WINE. The current Notes Windows client more or less works under WINE, but it is not a supported platform and there are no plans to support it.

    The plug-in for Linux is a bona fide port of Notes to a new windowing system. Like for our Windows and MAC clients, much of the Notes code is cross platform and the part that isn't has to be ported to each platform. The backend services for Linux were already mostly there (needed by the Linux version of the Domino server) -- just the UI calls had to be ported.

    So, like for the plug-in on Windows, Notes does much of it's own UI calls in the "application area", porting to each platform. Just the peripheral stuff (status bar, bookmarks, window tabs, etc.) are owned and done by the Managed Client using Java and SWT and such.

    Not that it really matters, but FYI because I know you're curious, the per-platform UI code for Notes is done using the GTK toolkit, matching the X Windows toolkit library choice made for Eclipse itself.

    Hope this helps and that I haven't revealed too much :-)

    Jeff Eisen

    Lotus Notes/Hannover Chief Architect

  1. 11  Michael  | 8/12/2005 2:47:08 AM

    @ Jeff Eisen

    So what about Hannover : as we've seen, Hannover brings many many UI enhancements. So will theses enhancements be made on the core Notes stuff, or will the core Notes stuff stay about the same and the eclipse UI will be more "intrusive" to the Notes stuff ?

    ps : yes, I'm curious ;)

  1. 12  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 8/12/2005 9:11:33 AM

    There will be enhancements made on the core "Notes" stuff... the promise in my presentation from DNUG/IBM Lotus Technical Forum is specifically "step-wise improvement in mail, calendar, and contacts"