Whats the story with Lotus?

I have just purchased a Toshiba lap-top with Lotus Smart Suite. I am wondering whether or not this was a wise purchase. I have already experienced some trouble opening these lwp files in a microsoft format when sent to my other desktop. Are there any tricks I should know about Lotus, or should I just pitch the whole thing and submit to the microsoft czar?

Ye Ghods! I know the answer to this! :slight_smile:

If you want, you can save your LWP files in a Mircosoft format and that should clear up the problem. Just click on FILE and go to SAVE AS. You should come up with a variety of formats including MS versions.

SmartSuite is officially in maintenance mode, according to my sources (i.e., no new development is planned – any future releases will be merely bug fixes).

More specifically, most of the Word Pro development team (I was on the team in 1996-8) was laid off earlier this year. Last I heard, responsibility for the code was being transferred to programmers at IBM’s facility in Bangelore, India.

Anyway, the LWP file format is pretty complicated, and Lotus didn’t document it very well (I never saw any real docs when I was there). This is not unique to Lotus – MS’s .DOC format isn’t too well documented, either.

I’d second Freyr’s recommendation, with the suggestion that you save as RTF instead of one of the WinWord formats; the WinWord filters are (and have long been) one of the buggiest parts of Word Pro. We got a lot of feedback from management about file conversions, but we couldn’t get the resources to really do anything about it.

thanks for the advice…wish me luck!

**3waygeek wrote:

SmartSuite is officially in maintenance mode, according to my sources (i.e., no new development is planned – any future releases will be merely bug fixes).**

Interesting. Here at IBM in Austin, we just got Lotus Notes R5 and the SmartSuite is version 9, the Millenial Version (up from version 97, the last release).

Version 9 seems really nice, especially if you’re pulling data off the web and stuffing into a document or a spreadsheet file.

Dan Tana; LUCK

Just my $0.02.

IIRC, Millennium Edition for Windows was released in 98 or early 99 – I’ve had a copy for at least a year now. Since you’re at IBM/Austin, you wouldn’t be running OS/2, by any chance?

AFAIK, Notes development is still going strong, even though Ray Ozzie has left Lotus/IBM. I won’t say anything else about Notes, since this isn’t the BBQ Pit :slight_smile:

Nope, I’m not using OS/2. I’m using (BLEECH) WIN 95. I don’t have a choice about LOTUS, it’s already installed on the machine and we don’t have a choice. shrug The Man wants it, so that’s what we use.

Once again I open a thread expecting to read amusing anecdotes about Colin Chapman, tales of the Jim Clark’s racing maneuvers, vicious bile directed at Lucas Electronics, descriptions of beautiful little cars, the complete story of the travesty that was British Leyland, and perhaps even some details of the Corvette engine. And once again I find you people talking about computer programs. :mad:

You bastards.