IBM Lotus Symphony Release Notes

What's New in Symphony 1.2

Performance enhancements:

  • Improved .ods and .xls files loading performance.
  • Improved .ods files saving performance.

Usability enhancements:

  • Enhanced performance optimization options usability by adding Symphony system tray icon.
  • Enhanced exported PDF accessibility by adding structural tags and attributes for document elements.
  • Enhanced BIDI support in Spreadsheet.
  • Added user interface language support in regional settings preferences page.
  • Enabled creating a hyperlink to local documents in all three editors.
  • Associated numbering and bullet style to paragraph properties in Documents.
  • Enhanced new page creation usability in Presentations.
  • Significant enhancements on DataPilot in Spreadsheets.

Installation:

  • Lotus Symphony GA is available on Ubuntu.
  • Provided Lotus Symphony Debian packages on Ubuntu.
  • Provided Lotus Symphony RPM packages on SuSe and RedHat.

On-line Help Enhancements:

Website:

  • Added Business Partner page.
  • Re-designed Buzz section, Plug-ins section, and Gallery Landing page.

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Key Bugs Fixes

Defects reported on the Symphony Forum:

  • Incorrect Library name appears in Template Organizer.
  • Portrait page in a PRZ document becomes landscape orientation while opening with symphony.
  • Toggling between centimeters and percentages display for width and height changes size of images.
  • Numbers format is unable to be saved to spreadsheet files.
  • The "File | Recent Files" menu is not wide enough to entirely display long file names.
  • Crop Function doesn't work properly in Symphony presentations.
  • Update all Links leads to crash while opening a .doc file.
  • Lines are overwritten with the sample doc file.
  • While opening files with Symphony which have already been opened in other applications, they should be read-only as expected.
  • Symphony crashes when opening a WordPro document.
  • Text copied from Symphony to MS Word uses non-breaking spaces by default.
  • Text become tremendously smaller after copy/paste in Input Line.
  • The shown results of formula cells are different from OO and MS Excel while opening a .xls file with Symphony.
  • Redundant page "Insert Slides/Objects" appears in Online Help.
  • Can not open a special spreadsheet file successfully.
  • Try to open a special excel file with Symphony, it fails and other Symphony tab windows close.
  • Measurement unit in sidebar and property window should be consistent.
  • The X axis can't display well in Symphony if the x axis type is data (such as 2008/04/21).
  • Korean characters display incorrectly on Ubuntu.

Linux

  • Symphony crashes when opening a special .prz under Linux platform.
  • [Ubuntu]warning message appears in terminal when upgrade Symphony.
  • [Linux]Symphony crashes when set numbering style to paragraphs in a table.

Language Related Fixes

  • [BIDI]Wrong location values display on OLE Object properties dialog in Symphony spreadsheet under RTL environment.
  • [BIDI]The title of Mail merge progress dialog is LTR under RTL environment.
  • Symphony crashes when input some contents into Title text box in a presentation document and vertically split the document window under BiDi environment.
  • Korean characters display incorrectly on Ubuntu.

Lotus Symphony Documents

  • Symphony freezes while opening one special doc and switching to "Online Layout".
  • The fly objects is removed or their anchor position is modified when show/hide some text-deleted empty paragraphs with fly objects anchored to them.
  • An empty text paragraph is appended to the end of the text deletion after show/hide a text deletion.

Lotus Symphony Presentations

  • Symphony crashes when clicking "demote bullet" button or close the "preview" dialog in outline view.
  • The layout of pages mess up when opening an .odp(created by Symphony) document by OpenOffice.
  • Symphony crashes when remove/preview the animation effect in "order of animation effects" dialog.
  • Symphony crashes if clicking "display" button for consecutive two times on "insert new pages from file" dialog.
  • Symphony pop-ups error message and crashes when export a presentation file to PDF.
  • The animation effect "change font color" in .ppt file gendered incorrectly in Symphony presentations.

Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets

  • Labels of chart's X-Axis is incorrect while opening a .xls file with Symphony.
  • Sheet links become invalid range when editing in the .xls file with symphony.
  • "YYYY/MM/DD" cannot be automatically recognized as a Date under US locale.
  • Symphony can not open a spreadsheet file.
  • Instant filter couldn't filter all column sometimes.

Programmability

  • Symphony crashes when run the com.ibm.productivity.tools.samples.views sample plugin and then insert fontworks in sample editor.

General usage

  • A couple of script.xlb error dialogs pop up when saving document the first time.
  • The focus doesn't move out from Western field as pressing Tab/Shift+Tab key on "IBM Lotus Symphony->Language Setting->Languages" preference view.
  • Changes in preferences can't be remembered after Symphony restarts with XPD preload enabled.
  • Symphony crashes when repeatedly opening a .ppt file and closing it during loading process for some times.
  • The 3D effect gets lost when saving a Symphony document with both inserted mail fields and 3D effect via "Finish Merge->Save" button on Mail Merge sidebar and reopen it.
  • Symphony freezes while saving a document via "Ctrl+S" to local directory where another document with same name exists,and choose Cancel on Documents-Save dialog.

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Known Issues

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.

Cannot copy cell formula from Symphony Spreadsheet to MS Excel

When copying a Spreadsheet cell formula in Symphony to MS Excel, it's not the formula but the formula value that copies to Excel.

Graphic cannot be inserted into custom shape

Symphony Documents doesn't support inserting graphic into custom shape. When opening the file containing such custom shape which includes graphic, the internal graphic will 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'.

Can't change file icons for associated file types under Ubuntu

Although one file type is associated with Symphony by preference page, Symphony can't change its file icon in GNOME Nautilus under Ubuntu platform

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.

OpenOffice cannot recognize the animation created by Symphony

Create a file with animation effect in Symphony, and then open the file in OpenOffice, the animation does not take effect.

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.

DataPilot table Panel auto refreshes when modifying source data

After modifying the data source which is used to create a DataPilot table, the layout data in DataPilot panel is not consistent with the DataPilot table if the automatically update button is checked or click update button. It is consistent with the new source data.

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.

Default template library can't change with language switching

If Symphony switches its language package from Preferences or system locale after installation and first launch, default template library configuration might not be updated correspondingly.

Workaround:

Before switching the language package, delete the Symphony workspace first

Input Method doesn't work on Linux sometimes

Sometimes, on NLV Linux environment, user cannot activate IMEs or input multi-byte characters by input methods.

Workaround:

  1. Set GTK_IM_MODULE environment variable to scim: %export GTK_IM_MODULE=scim
  2. Start new gnome terminal: %gnome-terminal --disable-factory
  3. Start Symphony within the new terminal: %symphony

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.

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

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.

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.

JAWS: Marked words cannot be read out consistently

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

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 may crash when deleting new sheet with Jaws running

With Jaws running, Symphony Spreadsheets may crash when deleting a new inserted sheet after modifying cell content.

Error occurs after launching Symphony as administrator on Vista

On Windows Vista, occasionally, Symphony document fails to be created when launching Symphony second time after completing one of the following:

  • Launch Symphony by right-clicking the icon on the desktop and selecting "Run as administrator".
  • Launch Symphony directly by enabling the check box "Open Lotus Symphony" on the last window of the installation wizard.

Workaround:

Quit Symphony and launch it again.

Some file type associations will be lost after upgrading

If Microsoft Office or SmartSuite file formats are associated with Symphony in Preferences page, these file type associations will be lost after upgrading Symphony to 1.2

Workaround:

Configuring these file type associations again on Preferences page after upgrading Symphony to 1.2.

OLE object becomes smaller when saving as PPT format and reopen

Copy an OLE object and paste it into Lotus Symphony presentation, and then save the presentation as PPT format, the size of the OLE object will become smaller when opening it again.

Workaround:

The OLE object can be resized manually.

Jaws can't read Spreadsheets cell correctly sometimes

Sometimes, the information of Spreadsheet cells cannot be read by Jaws

Modify Jaws configuration according to the following steps:

  1. Open C:\Program Files\Freedom Scientific\Shared\FsDomSrv\10.12\FsDomSrv.ini
  2. Replace all "expeditorw.exe" with "symphony.exe".
  3. Save this file and launch Jaws again.

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