What features would you like to see added to Lotus Symphony for Mac OS X?

Ma Yong Lin, Symphony Architect  |  May 20, 2010 1:56 AM
Profile image for Ma Yong Lin What features would you like to see added to Lotus Symphony for Mac OS X?

As a Symphony user on Mac OS X, I would like to see Symphony provide these features in the future.

1, Support of Services menu

Services are features exported by applications for the benefit of other applications. The Services menu can be found in every application’s application menu. It would be very convenient if Symphony can access services provided by other applications. For example, a user can select a paragraph from a document and get it read out through speech services. or select some content in a document and make a new sticky note by pressing Command+Shift+Y.

2, Support of Spotlight search for Symphony documents

Spotlight is a very powerful desktop search technology on Mac OS X. It would be very useful for document management if a user can search for Symphony documents by their contents. This has been supported by OpenOffice.org

3, Support of Apple Script

AppleScript is a scripting language that provides direct control of scriptable applications and scriptable parts of the Mac OS. It is the fundamental technology to perform repetitive tasks, automate complex workflows, control applications on local or remote computers on Mac. If Symphony is a scriptable application, a user can automate document functions with Symphony easily.

4, Support of quick look for .odp and .ods files.

Quick Look is a feature of Mac OS X introduced in version 10.5 that makes it possible for users to quickly discover the contents of listed documents, both as thumbnail images and as full-size preview images, without requiring the launch of a document’s application. Currently, odt file(oasis-open.opendocument.text) is supported by quick look. It is compatible with Symphony Text document. Quick look support for other Symphony document types are also very useful.

What are your Mac OS X specified favorite features?

14 Comments

  • RJ said on May 23, 2010 2:23 PM:

    I would like Symphony to use MacOS's native font handling.

  • Daniell Gartmann said on May 24, 2010 3:48 AM:

    Fully compatible with the screen reader in MAC OS X VoiceOver, please.

  • Elhay Achiam said on May 25, 2010 3:10 AM:

    Make Lotus Symphony look sharper on the Mac and on Windows 7 too.

    It already looks very good, the icons are very pretty. You need to reduce the clutter that was inherited from Open Office, many menu items that shouldn't be presented to intermediate users. You also need to work on the Preferences screen, in my opinion, making it a lot simpler, less cluttered and easier to find what you're looking for.

    Make use of the new technologies that are present in Mac OS X and in Windows 7. Transparency, shading effects, progress bar in the dock/superbar icon, native font handling, etc.

    Develop a ribbon like concept to be friendlier and easy to use.

  • Guest said on May 26, 2010 12:45 PM:

    Support more languages

  • Jean-Yves said on May 27, 2010 7:46 AM:

    Make it faster. On my MacBooc dual-core 2.0Ghz, it opens at a glacial pace, and once open it feels sluggish, especially the word processor. OO is much snappier.

    I love the interface IBM have added though. Much better than either OO or the hideous Ribbon in Office 2007/2010. IBM has come up with a far better design solution, imo.

    Add a decent database product - I'd love to see an Approach-style DB on Mac. Well, you did ask! ;-)

    Make the browser more... useful! It's really of limited use at the moment.

    Better font handling.

    Sort our the Prefs dialogue - bit of a mess I'm afraid.

    Great product overall though - very excited to see what happens when the GA is released.

  • James Krapf said on May 27, 2010 7:09 PM:

    Please reinstate the slash keyboard menu. Also, @functions should be able to be dynamic. When Summing a row of figures type @sum( and then you should be able to {end}{up}{end}{up} hit the period to stabilize the beginning sum point and the :end}{down} and return. This goes a lot faster than the explanation. These aspects of Lotus is what helped make it the best along with the File Combine capability. Thanks...

  • LG said on Jun 2, 2010 8:04 AM:

    How about a version that operates on pre-Intel structure?

  • Bernie said on Jun 4, 2010 9:12 AM:

    Don't add features for the sake of features like MS, which led to bloatware. Make sure features add value to end-users.

  • John said on Jun 7, 2010 3:17 AM:

    Support more languages

  • Guest said on Aug 24, 2010 3:47 PM:

    Bow about creating an electronic management Repository

  • Jean said on Aug 24, 2010 3:48 PM:

    How about creating an electronic management Repository

  • Mat Kordell said on Feb 24, 2011 5:36 PM:

    +1 for quicklook

    +1 for spotlight

  • Ivan Stephen said on Apr 18, 2011 6:23 PM:

    I'm using Symphony 3 on the latest Mac (10.6.3), after using OpenOffice and NeoOffice. Symphony seems more stable than either.

    I would like to see some things which should seem obvious:

    - Help tools which are more useful, considering that commands are often in a different place on a Mac.

    - I like the ability to reduce the icons to a bare minimum, but would like to add a few more icons which are NOT allowed, i.e. cell background colour. It's useful to toggle the panel on the right, but I could really use the extra bit of column width, so let us put it on the toolbar.

    - Why is it never possible LOCK borders?

    - We can't protect a specific cell without protecting the whole sheet.

    - No drawing module; put more into presentation module.

  • Virk said on Apr 18, 2011 8:23 PM:

    The 'slash' menu from 123.

    As a 'spreadsheet' power user & Office develper, I can say nothing has come close to that level of productivity & speed. But don't run it like the Excel 'Lotus 123' compatibility mode ... with nasty menu macros that purposfully slowed the user down 8-( .... it's gotta be quick, efficient & effective; which is why everyone loved Lotus 123.
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