What's New in Beta 4

The new Lotus Symphony Developer Toolkit is introduced with Lotus Symphony Beta 4. Now developers are able to build their own Symphony plug-ins using Eclipse technology. Using the API's and the documentation and samples provided with the Developer Toolkit, developers can build plug-ins and integrate them seamlessly into Louts Symphony productivity applications -- sharing menus and views, creating dialog and manipulating the content of Lotus Symphony documents directly. This programmability gives developers the ability to expand Lotus Symphony for with specialized capabilities , for example the WebSphere Translator Plug-in helps the user to easily translate the words and sentences on-the-fly when working on a Lotus Symphony document.

Performance

The general spell check performance is improved.

Usability

Slides can be inserted from existing files in Lotus Symphony Presentations. The data from external files can be imported so that a link to the external file is maintained. With this feature,users can refresh the embedded data when the external data source has been updated.

Interoperability

Password protected Excel (xls) file is able to be opened in Lotus Symphony Beta 4. Document encryption is enabled for Lotus Documents, Lotus Spreadsheets and Lotus Presentations.

Globalization

Euro currency is added to support some languages. The UI of installation program is now available for multiple languages.

Website

The Lotus Symphony website has been updated and enhanced to give users a catalog of plug-ins from IBM and 3rd parties as they become available and provide support should they have questions.

Also, a dedicated Developer Support Forum has been added to the website so developers building plug-ins get the help they need from IBM and other developers.

Toolkit of Lotus Symphony and plug-ins can be download from the website in Beta 4.

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Bug Fix List

The list below includes all the fixes we have made since Beta 3. We received some great input from the user community and support forum, and have tried to include fixes to many of the issues that you brought to our attention.

Bugs from Symphony Forum

• In Lotus Symphony Documents,Create Header. In the header part, auto-numbering can not work.
• Serious functional problems in Hebrew document editor
• In Lotus Symphony Documents, Turn off Number Recognition setting in table.Even you save the document, after exit symphony, the number recognition setting will not be saved.
• In Lotus Symphony Documents, "correct two initial capitals" and "capitalized first letter of every sentence" settings in Instant Corrections can not be saved when exit Symphony application.
• In Lotus Symphony Documents, create a table, input some data in table cell. Create formula with the data in table cell. Sort the table with one column. You will find the sort result is not correct.
• Open MS Excel file in Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets, then print the file. You will find the cells are more wider in Lotus Symphony than in MS Excel,So more pages will be printed out in Lotus Symphony.
• Open MS Excel file in Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets, the "date" format can not be recognized in Lotus Symphony Formula Input Line. There will be some unknown numbers shown instead of Date. For example, the date should be shown as: 01/01/2008, but it shows "3929382"
• Launch Lotus Symphony, then click the hyperlink "www.ibm.com/software/lotus/Symphony" in the home page tab, there will be some little red squares instead of icons in the web browser UI.
• When Lotus Symphony program is started, the task bar button in Windows XP SP2 should say "IBM Lotus Symphony" , not "Eclipse".

Linux

• [Linux] Uninstallation cannot continue after the error that appears when attempt to uninstall Symphony while Lotus Symphony is running
• [Linux] Title of message that blocks uninstallation while Lotus Symphony running is incomplete
• [Linux]ZY Song18030 is displayed but actually it is not in list
• [Linux] Buttons are not large enough to display all the text in Chinese/German env
• [Linux] Layout issue on ready to uninstall panel of uninstallation when OS locale is non-English
• [Linux] Should provide product name for location panel when OS locale is non-English
• [Linux] Word wrap in location/summary panel missed when OS locale is non-English
• [Linux] Informat] Popup dropdown menu in sidebar is not displayed completely
• [Linux] Font list in sidebar has an empty cell when locale is non-English
• [Linux] Required size in location panel and summary panel are different when being upgraded
• [Linux] Haven't a clear prompt information when upgrade to beta3 in the insufficient disk space.
• [Linux] String to block upgrading while Lotus Symphony is launched is not proper
• [Linux] The UI language can not display Arabic language when start from shortcut.
• [Linux]The UI language can not display Arabic language in Linux.
• [Linux]install panels are partially translated
• [Linux] File association will be removed after uninstall Lotus Symphony or Hannover though another one is left
• [Linux] "Next" and "Prior" show for the hot key on print preview mode.
• [RedHat] Presentation editor crash when open the 'Redefine style->shadowing' dialog of the sample PRZ file
• [Linux] Warning strings are truncated if install fails.

Language Related Fixes

• "Layout issue on complete panel when OS locale is Chinese/German"
• "Cannot create "File Type association" page in preference dialog in non-English environment"
• "Spell check does not work in Norwegian-Bokmal environment"
• "Hebrew BIDI: status bar position info is garbled"
• "License text will display in English first while system locale is Turkish"
• "Truncation on Export to jpeg in Russian"
• "Tradition Chinese homepage shows in Simplified Chinese"
• "Both help entry and content are English in Korean environment"
• "HEBREW Template Organizer: texts not mirrored in sample templates"
• "Hebrew: Not all paragrpah styles are shown"
• "No Hebrew support for numbered list in Hebrew"
• "There is a horizontal scrollbar in home page when the locale is Arabic or Hebrew"
• "Some string displayed in garbage code under Korean environment"
• "Information in help->about panel is incorrect when locale is Arabic(Egypt)"
• "Homepage in Arabic locale isn't RTL style"

Installation

• "Text of "View in English" button on license agreement panel should change on each clicking"
• "Lotus Symphony installer fails on last panel when in console mode"
• "Lotus Symphony installer admin install mode fails on control order error"
• "Partial Installation and setup occured when installing Lotus Symphony."
• "LotusInstall.log in installed folder and tmp folder are different in size"
• "Size in Add/Remove panel on Windows is not correct"

Lotus Symphony Documents

• "CTRL + 2 does not close the sidebar for the Lotus Symphony Documents"
• "Error occurs while clicking word processing editor in preference dialog"
• "Repeat operation will lead to application crash between inner section part and outer section part with Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y operation."
• "In Lotus Symphony Documents, Drag the lower left triangle of the horizontal ruler towards the right side,pull the upper one back to 0. Write texts and push Tab,and continue to write until line wrap.Save the doc and reopen, you will find the tab position is not correct."

Lotus Symphony Presentations

• "Lotus Symphony Presentations will freeze and an error dialog pop up when do some action in "Insert New Pages from File" dialog"
• "New Pages from File should not be enabled under 'Notes view mode."
• "Can not save the odp file to a ppt file correctly by Lotus Symphony Presentations , some page's contents are lost"
• "Some data are not correct when import .prz file"
• "Using "Move Down one Level" function to edit a presentation document in outline view, after inserting an Expand Page,then several times Undo/Redo operations will lead to Lotus Symphony to crash."
• "If using "color palette" to change the background of the page, the behavior of undo function is wrong and may cause crash."
• "In Lotus Symphony Presentations, create a big shape and input some text . Open the .odp file in OpenOffice, the size of the shape becomes smaller to fit the text."

Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets

• "Crash after refresh data from unreachable source of lotus123 file"
• "There is no screen reader info on dialogs when opening excel with encryption and unsupported file version"
• "Buttons' status are incorrect after select then deselect links in protected sheet."
• "Chart displays incorrectly in Symphony if its data source includes negative"
• "Lose some contents after export XLS as PDF"
• "Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets does not recognize "date" format for cells in imported .xls"
• "After saving the sample sxc file as xls, the style of some cells changes and INDEX function is lost"
• "Excel documents can not be printed correctly in Lotus Symphony with the default setting"
• "Properties on "Borders" tab in Data Point dialog of radar chart makes no effect to the data point."
• "Import data from an invalid source leads to Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets crash"

General usage

• "Dialog info is wrong when opening unsupported file version"
• "Lotus Symphony crashes after undo/redo the command for creating a frame with table and chart."
• "Text formating after reloading is not the same like when saved."
• "Lotus Symphony crashes after click "close preview" button if switch from "outline view" to "print priview" mode."
• "Insertion point is not responsive to the common key combination "Alt+Shift""
• "Open and close file repeatedly leads to Symphony response more and more slowly."
• "Temp file should be deleted after closing the new changed files and saving them."
• "Changes made in the Instant Corrections dialog are lost after closing Lotus Symphony"
• "There is not file name input textbox on the save dialog after clicking "Save" or "Save and open" on Recover dialog"
• "The preference option for autosave should be checked by default and default value is 10 min"
• "Home page shows incompletely which is caused by largest text size"
• "Lotus Symphony crashes if dragging down the scroll bar when loading the document."
• "FTP hyper link lost after save and reopen document"
• "Lotus Symphony title changed to J9 Launcher while ther while there are many applications exist in task bar"

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Known Issues and Limitations

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 tool, or to Lotus Notes, the text inside the graphic may be lost.

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.

Linux: No

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.

ODF file association is overwritten

The following file extension associations that are defined by the OpenDocument standard are overwritten on Windows platforms when you install Notes 8: .odt, .ott, .ods, .ots, .odp, and .otp. 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"

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.

Special characters are not supported in file name

Use of special characters, like "*" and "#" in a file name is not supported, and should be avoided. Unpredictable results, including opening the wrong file and overwriting other files, may occur.

Avoid using special characters when saving a document. If a file name contains special characters, rename it before opening it.

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.

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.

Installation program doesn't support BIDI languages.

Installer doesn't support two BIDI languages translation, includes Hebrew and Israel. In these 2 languages, the installer UI will in English, but it will install right NLV resource files. So after installation, Lotus Symphony has correct native UI languages.

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.

Spell check doesn't support the 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.

Lotus Symphony documents cannot be opened correctly via LotusScript

When opening documents with LotusScript code, if the LotusScript code is executed directly after the Windows system or Lotus Notes is restarted, the document is loaded into a separate window, not a tabbed window within Notes.

There are two workarounds:

Kill the soffice.exe process before executing LotusScript code

Disable preloading from the preference page; reference the preference page from File -> Preferences... -> IBM Lotus Symphony

Lotus Symphony freezes when invoking system menu with Jaws running

With Jaws 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.

The limitations of switching between languages

You can switch between English and 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.

Without a successful switch between languages, you may get a partially translated or completely English user interface. This problem also exists when you upgrade from a different NLV installation of the same Beta version.

Preference settings will be lost after you upgrade to Beta 4

Preference settings will be lost after you upgrade to a later Beta 4 version.

The Windows desktop icon and menu item cannot be created in some special ca

This problem usually happens when you switch between operating system language locales. You can still launch Lotus Symphony directly by navigating to the installation folder and double-clicking the symphony.exe file.

Can't create localized slide from templates after changing locale

Users change the locale from English to other languages, then create a presentation from the an existing template. The language of the created slide is still English.

File association is not fully installed on Vista with UAC enabled

Symphony file association is not fully installed on Windows Vista with UAC (User Account Control) enabled. This is because the installation program does not have enough privilege to write the file association information to registry during the provision. After users install Symphony as Admin and log in as a standard user, the file association does not work for this user.

Workaround:

1. From the Start menu, select Run...
2. In the Run window, type cmd and then click OK
3. Change the directory path to \framework\shared\eclipse\plugins\ com.ibm.productivity.tools.standalone.addin_ \apps.ibm.productivity.tools.standalone.addin)
4. From this dbr /> Notes and Symphony icons are created again. Delete them and use the original desktop icons.

"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'.

"Colors" setting in Preferences can't 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.

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Fixes in Symphony Beta 4 Update Release

The issue of failing to load some text documents is solved

The fix solved the problem that Symphony Beta4 fails to load some text document files. In fact, this bug is the "content.xml error" issue which was reported on the Symphony forum.

Ctrl+Alt+S shortcut keyboard is removed

In the previous Lotus Symphony build, Ctrl+Alt+S has been used to switch focus to the sidebar. Although it is removed, you can still use F6 to switch to the sidebar.

The issue that Alt GR + S can't produce Polish character ? in Polish locale

Alt GR (right alt) + S can now be used in a Polish installation of Symphony to produce the Polish character ?.

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