IBM Lotus Symphony Release Notes

What's New in Symphony 1.1

Performance enhancements:

  • Reduced memory footprint

Functionality enhancements:

  • Enabled Expeditor Client Management support and added Enterprise Management Agent setting in preferences page.
  • Added Mail Merge feature to Documents by which user can send out batches of letters that merge fields from a data source.
  • Improved macro enablement in the following aspects:

    • Enabled macro security policy in preferences page.
    • Removed "Author list", "New author" and "New path" options from Macro Security preferences page.
    • Added "Safe Mode" option in Macro Security preferences page.
    • Macro run time supports the "safe mode" running mode.
    • Enabled macro to be triggered by UI events.

User interface enhancements:

  • Created new file type icons

Interoperability enhancements with Lotus Notes:

  • Defect fixes for copy/paste operation on picture with hyperlink, paragraph alignment, text font size and encoding.

Usability enhancements in Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations:

  • The latest sidebar state is retained when user opens or creates a file

Usability enhancements in Presentations:

  • Supports copying/pasting object/page with their applied animations.

Usability enhancements in Documents:

  • Fixed the conflict between Heading 1/2 and 1. Heading1/2 in Table of Contents and they can be included in Table of Contents at the same time.
  • Revision enhancement.

Installation:

  • Supports Windows MSI Installer multi-user installation and users can create their own workspace.

Programmability:

  • Improved Developers' guide by refining both the content and format, adding toolkit introduction in part 1 chapter 4, adding two chapters to introduce the newly added sample plug-ins presentation and C2A, and changing all example code from image into text.
  • Added two sample plug-ins presentation and C2A.
  • Added a feature and an update site for those sample plug-ins.
  • Defect fixes and code refactoring of sample plug-ins
  • Refined the API Java DOC

On-line Help Enhancements:

  • Enhanced help content for Documents.
  • Re-organized table of contents for Documents in on-line help system.

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Bug Fix List

Defects reported on the Symphony Forum:

  • Fail to open a special .xls file, it report "An error occurred. The selected document could not be opened."
  • Can't open a document via "File>Open>File..." when Symphony is just started with only home tab opened.
  • It is said in the Symphony help you can reference cells from different documents using Navigator, but this method doesn't actually work.
  • Fail to open a special .odt file originally created in OpenOffice2.4, it report "An error occurred. The selected document could not be opened"
  • When double-clicking on a document, home tab comes up under High performance.
  • A "fblinkuse is undefined" warning popups in Online Help when script debugging is enabled.
  • [Vista]Symphony crash while scrolling a special .doc document.
  • Incomplete screen repaint when using Fontwork.
  • Symphony crashes or will not start on Limited User accounts.
  • Frequent crashes when using symphony documents.

Linux

  • [Linux]When launching Symphony on Redhat 5.2 and Ubuntu 8.04, a warning message "Could not initialize the application's security component" popups.
  • [Linux]Symphony crashes while drag a graphic from gallery into a Symphony documents.
  • [Linux]Symphony fails to remember the sidebar status of the last created document while open documents.
  • [Linux]While the text's effects in object is strikethrough with '/',any change of the text's font size will cause editor frozen.
  • [Linux]Mostly Symphony crashes when pasting a page contains animation effect on Text box into current presentation.
  • [Linux]While use keyboard to access the "Create=>Table" on toolbar, there will be two "Create Table" dialogs with same table name opened.
  • [Linux]Symphony crashes while copy/paste a page that contains more than 3 animation effects.

Language Related Fixes

  • [BiDi] Incorrect Spreadsheet OLE behavior in Symphony Spreadsheet/Documents
  • [Linux]Japanese characters in UI can't show correctly in Japanese locale machine

Installation

  • In some cases uninstallation fails to complete under the Italian locale.
  • Uninstaller cannot detect the running Symphony.
  • [Vista]soffice.exe of current user cannot be killed when uninstall as a standard user.
  • Keep workspace directory during the uninstallation.
  • [Windows]While upgrading from 1.0 to 1.1 and then uninstall, unexpected errors occurred during the uninstallation.
  • [Vista]While logging in as standard user and choose admin user whose workspace is not clean to finish installation in silent mode, there is no shortcut created on desktop and start menu, and the symphony.exe file is missing as well.
  • ECM preference settings doesn't take effect when upgrade from 1.0 to 1.1.
  • [Suse] While associated on all the available file types during installation,after the installation all the associated file types are still displayed the original icon.
  • After uninstallation or upgrade, cached Symphony MSI files are not removed.
  • [Win]While upgrade from Beta1 to Sym1.1 newest build, an unexpected error occurred at the end of installation.
  • Application crashes when exporting new encrypted document to PDF

Lotus Symphony Documents

  • Text lines are converted into black or blue smudge when open a special MS Word document with Symphony.
  • Symphony crashes while generating Large .ODT file.
  • Symphony crashes when copying tables with merged cells from Notes document into Symphony document.
  • Default color of removed text should be red as revision is enabled.
  • Symphony crashes while copy the complex table contents in one document to a new table in another document.
  • Copy some strings from Symphony Documents to a Notes RFT field, it looks like garbage.
  • Settings in "Additional Styles" of TOC is changed after reopen a document.
  • Symphony crashes after select all and copy then paste at the end of a complex odt file.
  • After edit a button with a macro event, the macro runs twice when click it.
  • Chart with X-value in .lwp documents is wrongly imported.

Lotus Symphony Presentations

  • Several OLE objects in a special Symphony Presentation document are invisible while no MS Office is installed.
  • Symphony crashes after undo some changes on the background of the table.
  • Symphony presentation setting for user-defined page size maximum needs to be increased.
  • Text box layout incorrectly in a special presentation file.
  • Symphony crashes while copying a group of animation objects.
  • Using OpenOffice to open a Presentation document with a Spreadsheet OLE generated by Symphony, the spreadsheet OLE are lost.
  • The numberings displays as bullets when opening a special PPT file with Symphony.
  • A refresh error occurs when change the text object from wrap to no wrap.
  • Text settings of animation effect can't be copied/pasted with their objects.
  • When copy a text box with multiple paragraphs to other pages, the animation effect on it is inconstant with the original one.
  • When copy/paste a chart in Presentation document, animation effects on it can't be correctly duplicated.
  • Animation lost when reopen an old version of odp file
  • Slide transition effect doesn't show for the presentation file generated by OpenOffice.
  • When play screen show, the default mouse pointer is still visible.
  • Content.xml errors when opening an ODP file converted from a special PPT file.

Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets

  • Delete linked data and update the link, then delete the linked data again, Symphony crashes when saving this file.
  • Data validity list rule may not be saved in MS Excel .xls format

Programmability

  • The API development guide can't work under Linux and windows.
  • [SUSE]In domviewer sample,the text-properties in DOM Tree View can not be getted
  • In C2A sample,the two recognizer keywords in sentence can not be recognized.
  • In Symphony Javadoc, the Class SelectionChangedListener in com.ibm.productivity.tools.ui.views should be deleted.

General usage

  • Symphony crashes while select a .dxf type file to create a .wmf grahic.
  • Symphony icons in Open menu are too big.
  • Remember properties sidebar states during the open/create/edit sessions.
  • Spellcheck could not function properly in Catalan version.
  • Security path which contains space(s) works abnormally if it's added via Macro Security page in Preferences dialog.
  • Symphony crashes when trying to create 10, 20 or more documents over 1MB in size from scratch.
  • "Wrap text" option for custom shape in Symphony is not compatible with that option in Open Office.
  • A error message will prompt when change XPD preload settings from preferences dialog.
  • Fail to new/open file under citrix environment.
  • Symphony always crashes after one crash happens with XPD preload enabled
  • As set the OS local date greater, Symphony keeps auto-saving continually.
  • IBM Lotus Symphony help page contains some confusing contents and grammar errors.
  • Symphony crashes when autosaving an encrypt document.
  • New file counter still continues after relaunch Symphony
  • Hyperlink with mixed-byte characters may be duplicated on Save
  • Notes with Symphony cannot be launched with JAWS running
  • Fail to launch if locale's switched to single-byte

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Known Issues and Limitations

Mail can't be sent by Lotus Notes in Mail Merge on Linux

For standalone Symphony's mail merge function, mail can't be sent by Lotus Notes under Linux platform.

Graphics with text cannot be copied to other applications

In the Lotus Symphony SpreadSheets and Lotus Symphony Presentations, inserting a graphic and inputting text into it, and then copying the graphic to another editor, or to Lotus Notes, the text inside the graphic may be lost.

Forms are not saved correctly in .PPT format

If a Lotus Symphony Presentations document that contains forms is saved as a Microsoft PowerPoint (.PPT) file, and then re-opened by PowerPoint, the forms in that document will be shown as blank rectangular frames.

Spellcheck does not support user dictionaries for some languages

Spell check does not support the user dictionaries of the following language versions: Hebrew, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Turkish and Hungarian.

Tables in Notes cannot be copied to Lotus Symphony Presentations

Selecting and copying a table in Notes, then pasting it into the Lotus Symphony Presentations, will cause only the table text to remain.

Installation program in BIDI languages shows in English

Installer doesn't support Hebrew and Arabic languages translation. If the system language is one of these two languages, the installer User Interface will be still in English. But the correct native language resource files still can be installed. So after installation, ,Lotus Symphony has correct native UI language.

The limitations of switching between languages

You can switch from English to any other supported languages. But you can only switch from one non-English languages to another within the same group:

  • Group 1 refers to Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazilian), and Spanish.
  • Group 2 refers to Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, and Turkish.
  • Group 3 refers to Catalan, Thai, Slovak, and Slovenian.

With an unsupported language switch, for example from French in group 1 to Danish in group 2, you can get a partially translated Danish or completely English user interface. This problem also exists when you upgrade from a different NLV installation of the same version.

The Package For The Web utility only supports English

The very first unpack progress dialog from PFTW (Package For The Web) utility doesn't support translation, so it always keeps in English.

Animation on child objects in a group can not be pasted

Mark several objects into one group, enter the group and set animations to the child object. When you copy the group and paste, the animations in the child object can not be duplicated.

"Reversing Path Direction" is not supported for animation effect

"Reversing Path Direction" is an attribute for the 'Motion Paths' animation effects in Microsoft PowerPoint. This attribute is not supported in Lotus Symphony Presentations; there will be no animation effect if this attribute is set to 'True'.

File type association can't be set in Citrix

The file type association can't be set by Symphony installation or Symphony Preferences in Citrix environment.

Formula result is incorrectly shown when opening Lotus 123 file

If a Lotus 1-2-3 file which contains formula text in cell with "Text Formula" style is opened by Symphony, the calculated formula result will be displayed.

Save unsupported document type may cause data loss

Unsupported document types can be opened by altering their extensions, but this can cause data loss when the file is saved back. For example, changing a .HTML file into a .SXW file and opening it may result in the document content being lost when subsequently saving the file.

Colors setting cannot be applied or restored correctly

Modifications on colors settings in "File > Preferences" can't be applied by clicking the "Apply" button. As a workaround, click "Modify" to apply the modifications.

After completing modifications, clicking "Restore Defaults" will not restore the default colors setting.

Linux: No "Save as type" option available on SUSE

There is no "Save as type" combobox in the 'Save as' dialog for Lotus Symphony running on the SUSE platform. File extensions need be set specifically to save a file as a certain type.

User cannot Undo if a document is not completely loaded

The "Undo" command does not work when a document is still loading (for example, if the page number in the status bar keeps on increasing), until that loading is finished.

TOC hyperlink in MS Word document doesn't work in Symphony

When an MS Word document with a TOC is opened by Symphony, the TOC hyperlink doesn't work as expected.

Workaround:

Select TOC and launch context menu, choose the "update Index/Table" item. The TOC hyperlink will be enabled.

Hyperlink target may be changed if pasted from Symphony document

In Symphony Documents editor, copy a hyperlink with non-empty frame type to other applications, the pasted hyperlink target will be appended with the frame type text. Then activating the hyperlink won't go to the target URL correctly.

Workaround:

Edit the pasted hyperlink and remove the appended frame type text from target URL. The hyperlink activation will be correct.

Enterprise Management Agent password is not remembered

The password set in File Preferences->Enterprise Management Agent is not remembered after Symphony restarts. The password has to be entered again, otherwise the connection failed warining will appear.

Workaround:

Manually add the following 2 lines to the file: $INSTALLDIR\framework\rcp\plugin_customization.ini:

com.ibm.rcp.security.auth/loginEnabled=true

com.ibm.rcp.security.auth/loginConfigName=SSO-KS

Some bullets may not be displayed in Numbering and Bullet dialog

In RedHat 5.1, some bullets can't be displayed correctly in the "Numbering and Bullets" dialog due to the insufficient fonts installed in operating system.

Workaround:

Install all the language packages of RedHat 5.1 then all the bullets can be displayed correctly.

Order of animation may be changed after pasting multi objects

Create several objects in one page and set animations separately. Copy these objects and paste to another page, the animation effect order may be different as previous. The pasted animation will be sorted by original object's created time order, not the animation setting order.

Workaround: adjust the animations in the pasted object.

Notice: If the whole page is copied and pasted, the animation's order will be correct.

Red Hat: Toolkit samples will not run in development environment

If a development environment has been set up on a Red Hat Linux platform, and you launch samples in the Symphony Toolkit, the sample plug-ins will not run successfully.

Workaround

This is a known limitation for the Red Hat Linux platform; please switch to the SUSE 10 platform to run in this configuration.

SLED 10: SCIM 1.4.5 or higher is needed

On SLED 10, text cannot be input correctly with SCIM 1.4.4 using Lotus Symphony . It needs to be upgraded to SCIM 1.4.5 or later.

f32main.exe processes appear opening file with Freelance OLE

If Lotus Freelance is installed and a presentation file which contains Freelance OLE object is opened by Symphony, sometimes many f32main.exe processes appear. The user should kill the f32main.exe processes manually since they will not disappear when file is closed.

Portrait orientation may be changed when opening Freelance files

If a SmartSuite Freelance file which is set with Portrait page orientation is opened by Symphony, the page orientation may be changed to Landscape.

Workaround:

User can modify the page orientation in the page properties dialog

Can't switch to new locale if choosing high performance

Install Symphony, check "Enable performance optimization" and choose "High" option in Preferences page. Close Symphony and switch to another locale then restart Symphony; the UI language remains unchanged.

Workaround:

Choose "Moderate" option in Preferences page and restart Symphony. The UI language will be changed according to current locale. Then choose "High" option to enable high performance optimization.

Language package may not be enabled with high performance

After check "Enable performance optimization" and choose "High" option in Preferences page, install the new language packages. The new language package is not enabled and consequently UI language is not switched to the new locale when the locale is switched.

Workaround:

Uncheck "Enable performance optimization" in preference page and restart Symphony.

ODF file association is overwritten

If ODF(.odt, .ott, .ods, .ots, .odp, and .otp) or OO1.0(.sxw, .sxi, .sxc, .stw, .sti, .stc) file types are selected to associate with Symphony during Symphony installation, then these associations are overwritten on Windows platforms when you install Notes 8. If you want to change the association, please consult your system administrator. The following gives one possible way to change the association of certain file extensions:

  1. In the Windows Explorer, right-click on a file with the extension whose association you want to change, and click "Open With"
  2. In the "Open With" dialog, click the program that you want to use to open the file, or click "Browse" to choose the program on a disk
  3. Select the check box "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file"

If ODF(.odt, .ott, .ods, .ots, .odp, and .otp) or OO1.0(.sxw, .sxi, .sxc, .stw, .sti, .stc) file types are not selected to associate with Symphony during Symphony installation, users can add/remove file associations on preference page.

Some customized Preference settings are not kept after upgrade

Some Lotus Symphony customized preference settings will be lost after upgrading from a version before Symphony 1.0 Beta4. Users needs to recover the preference settings manually. The default settings will remain unchanged after upgrading.

Workaround:

Reconfigure those customized preference settings manually after upgrade.

Windows desktop icon and menu cannot be created in special cases

This problem usually happens when you switch between operating system language locales. For example, On a Chinese Windows XP machine, if the Windows language is set to 'English' via "Control panel - > Regional and language options - > Advanced - > Language for non-unicode programs", the shortcuts on the desktop and Start menu cannot be created by the installation program. You can still launch Lotus Symphony directly by navigating to the installation folder and double-clicking the symphony.exe file.

Symphony freezes when invoking system menu with Jaws running

With Jaws 8 or Jaws 9 running, pressing "Alt + F" then left arrow, or "Alt + Space" to launch Lotus Symphony's system menu, leads to a Lotus Symphony freeze. To recover from the freeze, please press "Alt + Tab" to switch focus to another application, then back.

Workaround:

Please press "Ctrl + Tab", "Alt + F", or "F10" to switch focus to menu bar, then press "Alt + Space" to launch Lotus Symphony's system menu.

JAWS 8.0: Marked words cannot be read out consistently

JAWS 8.0 will not consistently read out words marked by the "Find & Replace" or "Spelling Check" dialog, if JAWS has been started with the operating system. As a workaround, close JAWS 8.0 and restart it.

JAWS: Version 8.0 or higher is needed using Windows

For JAWS users on a Windows machine, JAWS 8.0 or higher is required for Lotus Symphony.

UI labels may be truncated with an ellipsis at the end

UI labels may be truncated with an ellipsis (...) at the end. To work around this issue, hover your mouse over the truncated label text, and the full text will be shown as a hover tip.

Symphony can't be launched in enforce mode under SELinux

In Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) platform with "enforce" mode being enabled, Lotus Symphony can't be launched.

Workaround:

Run the following command with root privilege:

  • chcon -t textrel_shlib_t < install_location >/framework/shared/eclipse/plugins/com.ibm.productivity.tools.base.infra.linux_< version >/libvcl645li.so
  • chcon -t textrel_shlib_t < install_location >/framework/shared/eclipse/plugins/com.ibm.productivity.tools.base.system.linux_< version >/liblog4pt.so
  • chcon -t textrel_shlib_t < install_location >/framework/shared/eclipse/plugins/com.ibm.productivity.tools.base.app.linux_< version >/libdesktp645li.so
  • chcon -t textrel_shlib_t < install_location >/framework/shared/eclipse/plugins/com.ibm.productivity.tools.base.framework.linux_< version >/libetidev.so

Notes:

  • replace < install_location > with the Symphony installation location, for example /opt/ibm/lotus/notes or /opt/ibm/lotus/Symphony
  • replace < version > with the version of the plug-in, for example 3.0.1.20080520-1702

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