IBM Lotus Symphony - Office Suite [discontinued]

[toitoy]

[Moderator note: this project has been discontinued in favor of Apache OpenOffice.]

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IBM® Lotus® Symphony™ is a richly-featured set of productivity tools that are intuitive and easy to use and provided at no charge. There are three applications that make up Lotus Symphony: Lotus Symphony Documents, Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets, Lotus Symphony Presentations.
Lotus Symphony is based on OpenOffice.

forum post how to make it portable:
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotu ... 52603?open

Code: Select all

Workaround:
1). Install symphony on USB stick, such as "H:\IBM\Lotus\Symphony";
2). Remove the workspace folder, such as "H:\IBM\Lotus\Symphony\data";
3). Modify the property file of rcpLauncher, such as "H:\IBM\Lotus\Symphony\framework\rcp\rcpLauncher.properties";
Change
"rcp.data=H\:/IBM/Lotus/Symphony/data" 
To: 
"rcp.data=data"
4). Create a shortcut to point to Symphony installation directory, such as: "H:\IBM\Lotus\Symphony\symphony.exe" or "H:\IBM\Lotus\Symphony\framework\rcp\rcplauncher.exe" -config symphony.
5).Double click the shortcut to run Symphony

[the_watcher]

I was currently looking into office alternatives, and stumbled onto IBM's suite.
They still don't provide a portable version, but for anyone interested, besides the above workaround toitoy posted, there is also an official method here : Installing Symphony on a USB drive (aka making Symphony a green application)

After Symphony is successfully installed, you can copy the installation and make a change to a configure file that will allow you to:
Utilize Symphony from a USB drive, then mount the USB device and use Symphony in other machines. This is sometimes called a green application.
Have multiple versions of Symphony installed on one machine. For details on this type of setup, see the article Installing multiple versions of Symphony on one computer

Complete the following steps:

• 1. Install Symphony by following the steps in the installation guide for Windows.
  By default Symphony will be installed to C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Symphony.
  2. If the soffice.bin process is running, use the Task Manager to end it.
  3. Determine where you want to copy the Symphony installation and create a folder for it.
  For example, if you are going to locate it on a USB drive, you can create a folder like D:\Software.
  We will use this sample location in the remaining steps.
  4. Copy the entire Symphony folder from its original installation directory to the new folder of your choice.
  For example, copy the Symphony folder from C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\ to D:\Software.
  5. In the folder that you just copied, locate the file D:\Software\Symphony\framework\rcp\rcplauncher.properties.
  Edit this file, changing:
  rcp.data=${env.USERPROFILE}/IBM/Lotus/Symphony/
  to
  rcp.data=${env.USERPROFILE}/IBM/Lotus/Symphony1.2/
  6. (Optional) The user data will be created and put into the %USERPROFILE%/IBM/Lotus/Symphony1.2/ folder.
  If you want to preserve the user data from the original Symphony installation, you can copy the contents of directory %USERPROFILE%/IBM/Lotus/Symphony/ to %USERPROFILE%/IBM/Lotus/Symphony1.2/
  Then delete dialog.xlc and script.xlc in directory %USERPROFILE%/IBM/Lotus/Symphony1.2/.sodc/user/basic
  7. (Optional) In order to conveniently launch Symphony, you can create one shortcut on desktop to link to D:\Software\Symphony\symphony.exe. To do this, locate the file symphony.exe in the Windows Explorer, right-click on it and drag it onto the Windows desktop. From the pop-up menu, select Create Shortcut Here.
  8. (Optional) If you only wish to use Symphony from the USB drive and not to have it on your hard drive, you can uninstall Symphony using Add/Remove Programs from the Windows Control Panel. This will remove the registry entries and MSI DB entries from the Windows system. As a result, you will not be able to double-click a document icon nor use "Open With..." option to open a document in Symphony. One workaround way to open document is to drag-and-drop a file icon into the main window of the running Symphony program.

[Midas]

Lotus Symphony is based on OpenOffice.

Any feedback on how it compares with Open/LibreOffice,then?

[the_watcher]

It is actually openoffice 3 with a custom (tabbed) interface.
As IBM announced, version 3.0.1 is their last version of Lotus Symphony. They contributed their code to the Apache foundation, and they're going to cooperate with them for the next version of openoffice. (Source)
IBM also provides extra functionality using plugins that you can download from their website.
For more info, check http://www-03.ibm.com/software/lotus/sy ... ome#page=1

[Midas]

Thank you, the_watcher.

Symphony 3.0.1 is the current release and will be until the Apache OpenOffice 4 release is done. At that time, IBM will distribute an IBM edition of OpenOffice, with extensions to integrate it with our other collaboration products, and with IBM support in exactly the same way that we support both embedded and stand-alone Symphony users today.

A propos, a rather interesting debate regarding this decision can be skimmed @ http://www.robweir.com/blog/2011/06/ope ... llacy.html

[the_watcher]

I would rather see them working together, joining forces in an effort to improve an already established suite, may it be called open or libre-office. MS office is the standard these days, and the truth is, we don't really need too many alternatives. We need just A GOOD ONE

[Midas]

The problem with that is you have MS reigning supreme in Windows, while Open/Libre is the standard suite for Linux and the rest of the world of open (currently, I don't do MacOS so I don't really know who's the sovereign there)...

There are some good alternatives inside each of those universes, but as soon as you have to be hopping between platforms, you're pretty much screwed. That situation has got to end, period. IBM had the muscle (and a mighty footing, at least in the Windows & Linux fields) to steer this closer to a proper solution. Sadly, they chose navel gazing on this one... so, it's farewell.

Let me stress that: as in nature, diversity is good; lock-in & system balkanization sucks.

EDIT (on topic): http://opensourcepack.blogspot.pt/2011/ ... pack3.html

[webfork]

a rather interesting debate regarding this decision can be skimmed @ http://www.robweir.com/blog/2011/06/ope ... llacy.html

That was back in 2011 and the development pace is way behind LibreOffice. I'm certainly willing to be wrong about that with regard to some future awesome release, but so far it looks like LibreOffice has the advantage.

One of the rationales behind OpenOffice originally was their IBM backing. The thought was that IBM would put some real money and corporate backing into the project and it would really take off, hopefully taking Microsoft profits down with it. Unfortunately over several years nothing seemed to happen with that. Additionally, IBM doesn't have a strong reputation with productivity software (I've complained about Lotus in the past).

On the other hand, part of me really wants to try using this because there's so little documentation out for LibreOffice. It certainly does more than OpenOffice, but tracking down some information on how that new stuff works has been very annoying.

To that end, this PC Magreview was pretty compelling. Will probably test it out.

[webfork]

Few things since my last post:

• Recent Slashdot article was interesting.
• Also, I actually tested out Symphony and wasn't very impressed. The menu system OpenOffice used always annoyed me and I wasn't conscious of how much until I went backward. Its just ugly. IBM has done a lot to clean it up, but it just can't compare to LibreOffice.
• Writes a LOT of garbage to the registry according to ZSoft. Any portability program would have a lot of work to do.
• Its missing a lot of the functionality of OpenOffice/LibreOffice (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation only -- no database, drawing or others). For some reason includes an entire Web browser. I have no idea why that's necessary or even desirable. LinuxJournal has an article from 4 years ago that still seems to illustrate my issues with the interface. That its 4 years old and this hasn't gotten cleared up sort of double-underlines my issue here.

Think I'm going to give up on this one and just deal with the LibreOffice oddities.

[webfork]

Old thread update: just pointing to the OpenOffice thread that talks about what appears to be a merge of one of Symphony's primary differentiating features.