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This page lists known restrictions in this release of SunForum, and other important information. It is grouped into the following sections.
 
General
Password-protected conferences
Whiteboard
Application Sharing
Audio/Video
Directory Support
NetMeeting 3 Interoperability


General

Although it should work with all window managers, SunForum has been developed primarily for the Common Desktop Environment (CDE).
If you cannot find a feature that you have used in a similar conferencing product, see SunForum Feature Comparison to check the availability of the feature in different products. 

Password-protected conferences

When you attempt to join a conference which has been designated as password-protected, SunForum prompts you to specify the password. 

Some T.120 implementations incorrectly advertise conferences as password-protected, even when no password has been specified. In this case, just click OK without specifying a password: the conference will be established as normal. 
 

Note that you cannot create a password-protected conference with SunForum. 

Whiteboard

When interoperating with Windows systems, text entered into the Whiteboard (whether on the Windows or UNIX system) may not appear in the same font on both computers. This is improved by running SunForum with a TrueType font server (see Advanced Topics). 
If you experience problems with the T.126 Whiteboard, check that SunForum is running in the correct compatibility mode. Best results are achieved by selecting NetMeeting 3 mode when in a conference with NetMeeting version 3, and T.120 mode in all other cases. (See Selecting the Whiteboard Mode). 
Occasionally the NetMeeting T.126 Whiteboard will start up with all buttons grayed out. This can be resolved by restarting the NetMeeting Whiteboard. 
The importing and exporting of images has not been fully tested with all the supported formats.

Application Sharing

It is recommended that you run your window manager in click-to-focus mode (rather than move-to-focus) when using application sharing. This makes cross-platform application sharing more consistent, since Windows always runs in this mode (and so applications shared by NetMeeting will exhibit this behavior). 
If you find that you cannot share applications on your desktop, check the following:
 
After installing SunForum, you must restart your X server before you can share local applications. 
You must be running SunForum on the same system as the X server on which it is being displayed in order to share applications to other users. 
On systems that do not support 24-bit color depth, SunForum uses the system colormap by default, which may mean that the range of colors displayed is limited. This may be improved by:
 
closing other color-intensive X applications (such as bitmap editors and web browsers) before starting SunForum
running SunForum with a private color map (using the -install command-line option) - note that this may result in "colormap flashing".
If all systems support 24-bit color depth, but application sharing still downgrades to lower resolution color, check that SunForum is running in the correct compatibility mode.
 
In order to share applications with NetMeeting version 3 at 24-bit color depth (using NetMeeting's "True Color" protocol), SunForum compatibility mode must be set to "NetMeeting 3". 
In order to share applications at 24-bit color depth with other T.120 clients (including earlier versions of SunForum), the compatibility mode must be set to "T.120". 

See also Configuring SunForum Options and Color Resolution.

Audio/Video

You may find that the size of the My Video window changes when you start a call, or when another person joins or leaves the conference. This is because another person may be using a conferencing product that cannot support the size you originally selected; SunForum cooperates with the other conferencing products to select the best compromise between the requirements of everyone currently in the conference. 
If you find that you cannot hear or see another person in the conference, check the following: 
 
Does the other person's conferencing product support audio/video? Some products do not include this support, or (for example) support audio but not video. 
Is this conference using multipoint audio/video? The other person may be using a conferencing product that supports only point-to-point, or is not fully H.323-compatible. See Working With Other Conferencing Products for more information.
After agreeing with the other conference participants (you can use Chat to do this), end the conference, and restart it as a point-to-point conference between you and the person you could not hear or see. If this succeeds, the other participants can then join the new conference and work in point-to-point mode. 

Directory Support

Problems may be encountered when logging onto and querying some public directory servers, which can get very congested. If this occurs, try using a different directory server. 

NetMeeting 3 Interoperability

NetMeeting version 3 introduces many new features to Microsoft's earlier conferencing products. Unfortunately some of these features are not backward compatible with earlier versions of NetMeeting or SunForum. For this reason SunForum now provides two compatibility modes
 
T.120 Compatibility mode
NetMeeting 3 Compatibility mode

In T.120 Compatibility mode SunForum uses the standard T.120 protocol and is fully compatible with NetMeeting 2 and earlier versions of SunForum. In this mode SunForum provides a similar level of interoperation with NetMeeting 3 to that provided by NetMeeting 2. 

You should use T.120 Compatibility mode if you are conferencing with NetMeeting 2.x or earlier versions of SunForum.

In NetMeeting 3 Compatibility mode SunForum supports the following features of NetMeeting 3 which are not compatible with standard T.120 conferencing products.
 
True Color Application Sharing
NetMeeting 3 Application Sharing and Control
Microsoft variant of the T.126 Whiteboard protocol

In this mode SunForum provides a similar level of interoperation with NetMeeting 2 and earlier versions of SunForum to that provided by NetMeeting 3.

The Shared Clipboard feature has been retired in NetMeeting 3. SunForum continues to support this feature in both T.120 and NetMeeting 3 compatibility modes, so you can still share clipboard data with other copies of SunForum or NetMeeting 2, but you will not be able to share clipboard data with other people running NetMeeting 3. 

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