Lotus Notes Insufficient Memory Too Many Design Elements

Category Show-n-Tell ThursdaySnTTSuperNTFLotus Notes
In myrecent post aboutusing Notes @Formula language to compute a database's anapplication's 'Master Template' name, we learned about the $FormulaClasshack that allows regular Notes views, which most folks think can only displayregular documents, to also display design elements (no, I'm not kidding).By pure coincidence, the very next day our good friend Andre Guirardpublished an article allabout this technique, and included a particularly helpful reference toall the various $Flag values and how they can be used to help determinethe type of element(s) to display.
The example 'Database Info'view in my earlier post gave but a small glimpse into the power of thistechnique, since it was designed to only display a single element, thedatabase icon. SuperNTF relies heavily on this technique in several otherareas, such as anytime you need to compute a list of forms, views, images,or whatever. The usual technique for collecting such lists is to rely onLotusScript to build them during a form PostOpen event, which is oftenan annoyingly slow operation. In SuperNTF, you need little more than aquick and simple DbLookup to grab such lists.
The View and Form Configuration formsare perfect examples of the utility of this approach. In both cases thereare several dialog list fields on the form that allow an application administratoror developer to select from a list of forms or views. If you look at thetop of those forms in Domino Designer you will see several 'hidden'fields, among which you will find such cryptically named ones like 'ViewList'and 'FormList' (bonus points for guessing what those are for ). In turn, all the visible fields that need to present the correspondinglists point to those hidden fields, so the lookup computations are onlyperformed once for the entire form.
But wait, there's more!
As cool as doing simple lookups againstviews of design elements is, SuperNTF offers several user-, or rather developer-facingviews of design elements that do tricks Domino Designer can't. A singleview of ALL design elements, categorized by element type but also sortableby name, alias, last save date, last saved by, etc.? With view actionsfor things like toggle 'prohibit refresh/replace flags' or 'cleanand sign selected elements', or import design elements saved as DXL?As you wish:
Or how about a view of all image resourcesshowing the actual images IN THE VIEW? Don't try THIS with Domino Designer:
You will find the above views, and abunch of other useful gems, in the latest release of my SuperNTF Notes applicationframework template. To find them, open the 'Administration' paneland look under 'Design Tools'.
If you want to copy the viewsto another application, their names are prefaced by 'DESIGN - 'in the view list. In that case, you'll also want to copy the followingadditional elements:
- Agent: '(DESIGN - Import DXLDesign Elements)'
- Forms: 'DESIGN - Smart PreviewForm' and 'DESIGN - Image Preview'
- Image Resources: 'Inherits fromtemplate', 'Prohibit Refresh/Replace', 'SNTF_btn_Design_24x20x3.gif','SNTF_btn_Template_24x20.gif', and 'SNTF_btn_Tools_24x20.gif'
For additional insight into the $FormulaClasstricks used to create these views, you can check out:
- Dan Velasco's DominoPower articleFun with $FormulaClass
- Julian Robichaux's blog entry Modifying$FormulaClass in Views
- Vince Schuurman's $FormulaClass Hackpiece
- Ytria technote How to create views that list designelements by changing the $formulaclass item using ScanEZ
Also, I wanted to mention Andrew Barkerwho I credit for getting me started on the convoluted formula used to siftout what type of design element a given 'document' represents.His 'Elemental' OpenNTF submission seems to have disappeared,but all the same it was a big help.