With the Lotus Notes 8.5 and 8.5 client comes a new suite of productivity tools that support the OASIS OpenDocument Format (ODF). ODF is an international standard that provides support for multiple file formats for word processing, presentations, and spreadsheets. By adopting this format, IBM has allowed Notes users to read and save documents in the Microsoft Office format as well as read from IBM Lotus SmartSuite documents. Both can be saved as ODF documents or as PDF format documents. IBM/Lotus ships these productivity tools in Lotus Notes 8.5 and can also be downloaded as the Lotus Symphony Suite (visit: www.lotus.com).
The advantage of using the productivity tools with ODF is that you no longer have to purchase an application from a single vendor in order to share and save your documents. Using a non-commercial ODF product will allow you to avoid having to maintain licenses, and will also allow you to stop worrying about your software reaching the end of its shelf life. These benefits can lead to a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for maintaining software for document-based data.
This chapter provides an overview of the three productivity tools that are provided with the client. They are:
These productivity tools are also referred to as Document Editors, since you use them to create and edit documents in various formats (word processing, presentations, and spreadsheets respectively).
The Eclipse architecture of the Notes 8.5. client supports the integration of other applications. One key example of this is the integration of the productivity tools. The preferences for the tools are in the Preferences interface. When opening the preference options for the productivity tools, you will see the following:
This setting will load a file called soffice.exe. This file corresponds to a stub that remains resident so that the tools will launch more quickly. If you do not want this to occur, choose the setting not to pre-load the productivity tools.
The productivity tools are independent of the Domino 8 server. This means that the tools will function without a Lotus Domino 8 server. They can even be launched when the Notes client is not running. To do this, either double-click on the icon on your desktop, or select the program from the Start menu.