Surprise: Notes 8 still does not print
by Volker Weber
I know this is almost ironic. But there seems to be a silly bug when printing HTML-formatted mails. Notes finally can render them nicely, courtesy of the Eclipse browser — which happens to be Internet Explorer on Windows. Odd things happen in the client. You can for instance right double click the header of an HTML email to close, but not the body, because, well you are in the browser control, which does not know anything about right double click.
Now things get interesting. When I wanted to compare the printout from Mac Mail to the Notes printout, I came across a very odd behavior. This is the original mail printed from Mac Mail:
And this is the same message printed from Notes 8 on Windows:
Forget about the less than perfect rendering. Do you notice anything? The header is gone. No, it is not on a separate page. It is missing in action. It so reminds me of the poll "How would you like your beta test?". And notice something else? The footer says:
file://C:\Documents and Settings\yadayadayada\Local Settings\Temp\notesA...8/28/2007
Notes obviously writes a temporary file to disk and lets IE render it to print. What happens if you get a MIME-encrypted message? Will Notes write that to disk as well? And what happens, if the file is left behind without being properly deleted? This may need some further investigation.
Update: Why didn't I think of this before? If you avoid Expeditor and just run the classic Notes in its basic configuration, you get much better results:
I don't like the way the header is presented when compared to the Mac Mail output, but at least it is usable.
Comments
I spotted (and correctly diagnosed) the right double click thing the other day.
I hadn't tried printing an HTML email though.
Oh dear.
Beside printing HTML mails: It would would also be nice if Notes 8 uses Internet Explorer for displaying HTML mails, because then actions like moving an embedded image to a file would be possible the first time. A lot of users continously complaining about the "special" rendering by Notes. (Most newsletter designers seem to work only with Outlook)
But wait - what happen then to security concerns...?
Printing HTML mails without mail headers and the temporary local files seem to be an issue of the Notes 8 mail design. If you open a mailbox with Notes 8 which is based on the design "Domino Web Access 7", everything is (as bad) as ever, but with the mail header.
Hey - at least the red X boxes aren't there where the images belong. This is a great day! Hopefully release 8.0x will improve things even more.
Since R1 the secret agenda of the Notes team always has been: "Save the trees - don't print". So far they are successful.
:-) stw
Well, I do remember one version who would print the header on an extra page. Completely forgetting about it, does indeed save trees, unless people won't believe their eyes, and try to print it multiple times before giving up.
Good to see that the header image has a white line through it just like mine...clearly my install is working as expected *sigh*
I'm getting tired of this...
Funny, I have a header on the printout. It is ugly and just text, but it is there.
That is interesting. I have verified with at least a dozen different clients, and it was never there. Are you sure you are looking at a MIME-formatted message? Or has your server turned it into a CD format?
I am never sure about what I am doing, but I printed the same mail about the redbooks.
I used two different printers and it prints on both.
Want a scan?
About half of the page is the header. A lot of lost real estate and not what I like. It is a bug.
Domino has two options how to deal with incoming MIME messages:
Leave them as they are and deliver them to the client
Convert them to Rich Text and deliver this to the client
Since I have tested with several people, I am suspecting that you are looking at a Rich Text Message.
Actually, I just tested this (and you know I know a MIME message when I see one) and I did get a header.
A really ugly header that gave subject, sender and recipient and the words "Show Details", in that order I think, and without any helpful hints about which was which (To: From: Subject:).
Then the next half page or so was empty white space. And then there was a reasonably well rendered version of the HTML part of the email.
And then there were the header and footer lines inserted by IE, including that generated temporary filename.
So not the same as you are seeing, but by no means acceptable.
Can you make a PDF for me?
This is really odd. Why are we seeing different results? I think we have not yet nailed the circumstances of why Notes loses the headers in some instances.
Ha, mei serverle rendert gar nix.
It is MIME and I have the same print as Chris Linfoot.
