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Two Great Reasons To Buy A Book Two days ago I got a note in my mailbox (my postal mailbox) informing me that a package delivery had been missed, so I went to the local depot yesterday and they handed me a large envelope that was half covered with Latvian postage stamps. Yes, I said Latvian. At first I was mystified. Who was sending me something from Latvia? I hadn't a clue. Then it occurred to me: I bought a book a few weeks ago. This was it. Reason number one to buy this book is the Latvian stamps. I'm not a stamp collector, but these stamps are very cool!
Reason number two to buy this book is that it rocks! The book I'm talking about is Normunds Kalnberzins' LotusScript to Lotus C API Programming Guide. If you are a serious Notes and Domino developer... serious enough that you have Dan Appleman's Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to the Win32 API, or serious enough that you know you probably should have it... then you should absolutely have this book too. The Notes C API is scary enough on its own, and the Notes object model in LotusScript has become powerful enough that it is a rare occasion that you need the API, but when you hit the wall in LotusScript, you have few alternatives. Sure, there's the C++ API and you can build an LSX using it, and that's easier to code and safer than the C API in many respects, but that, too, has limits... Plus, that adds the hassle of having to deploy not only the LSX but also the C++ API runtime DLL. Calling the the C API from LotusScript is simpler in that respect, but it's still scary stuff for most people. This is where Normunds' book comes in. Until now, there has been a dearth of documentation on the subject of calling the API from script. The book, and the reference section of Normunds' web site takes care of that. Although the English writing in the book isn't quite perfect, it is still very understandble, and the tutorial style and the level of technical detail are excellent.
If I could only have two books on Notes and Domino. this would be one of them. The Notes and Domino 6 Programming Bible would, of course, be the other.
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