Talk:Lotus Symphony
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I don't recall if it was Lotus, but I'm 100% sure that there was a Symphony spreadsheet application for the BBC Master 512k (and probably lesser, and possible Electrons). My dad used it all the time before migrating to the DOS version. I'm fairly sure it pre-dates any DOS version and am surprised it's not mentioned.. unless it wasn't Lotus Symphony.
[edit] Database power
I was told by a database professional that Symphony's database environment is exceptionally powerful. Its "macro command language" is also quite powerful, allowing bytes to be read from any file, processed, and output to any file. Also, it takes advantage of Symphony's menu-handling routines, allowing the command language writer to create menu systems of any depth. Symphony is actually an integrated suite of five environments: SHEET (spreadsheet), FORM (database), DOC (word processing), COM (modem-based communications), and GRAPH (simple business-oriented graphs, including bar charts, pie charts, X-Y plots, and so on). The version I have is 2.2, of which the COM environment is useless (as of 2007), and though the GRAPH environment uses CGA graphics, it's still usable under Windows XP. Years ago, a Toshiba customer support representative told me that Symphony caused some problems because instead of using standard DOS procedures, it sometimes used direct BIOS calls, but Windows XP seems to support it well. D021317c 06:18, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
