AbiWord 1.0.1 Released 458
plam writes "After 3 years of hacking, the AbiWord team has unleashed AbiWord 1.0.1 upon the world. AbiWord is a Free cross-platform word processor which runs on Linux and Windows, MacOS X, QNX, FreeBSD, Solaris and others. AbiWord is small and compact (20 times smaller than OpenOffice!), yet contains most of the features found in larger word processors, including Word and WordPerfect import/export."
About time (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:About time (Score:4, Funny)
The actual coding only takes a couple of weeks. The rest of the time is consumed by product planners trying to think of any new features compelling enough to justify the price of an upgrade.
20 times smaller than OpenOffice! (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, I tried to download it, and my up link was saturated for a good three hours.
Re:20 times smaller than OpenOffice! (Score:3, Funny)
But AbiWord is smaller than both of them put together.
Release announcement (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Release announcement (Score:2)
Heck I don't even really play games that much any more. I might even remove windows (or at least shrink the partition)
To think the only thing keeping microsoft on my computer is *footnotes* sheesh
Re:Release announcement (Score:4, Informative)
It depends what you want to do. If you're writing small pieces for immediate printing like letters, invoices or articles then Lyx is a bit over the top. But for academic papers, online (and printed) books, dissertations, code documentation and the like, it has no equal IMHO.
Re:Fuck the footnotes! (Score:3, Insightful)
need to try this new version (Score:2, Interesting)
is there anything like this coming out?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Then again, what is an ABI ?
Re:is there anything like this coming out?? (Score:2, Informative)
ABI is Application Binary Interface
Re:is there anything like this coming out?? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:is there anything like this coming out?? (Score:2)
To keep things fair, I also think it would be great if KOffice could be built as a Qt-only suite as well.
Re:is there anything like this coming out?? (Score:2, Interesting)
We certainly intend to keep the non-GNOME AbiWord as a viable option. But we don't have the resources to start building our own spreadsheet (or other office apps).
If there's an interoperability API to code to, there's good chances that someone (probably Martin Sevior, he rocks) will implement the bits AbiWord needs in order to use this API so that Abi can be embedded in other programs.
I think there was work on other cross-application interfaces e.g. for Windows too. I don't know any details about this.
You don't have to (Score:2)
Asking people not to use the functionality in the Gnome and KDE libraries is asking them to constantly reinvent the wheel, leading to code bloat and slower development.
Re:is there anything like this coming out?? (Score:5, Informative)
As for spreadsheets, in the near future we release code which is able to embed Abiword files in Gnumeric [unimelb.edu.au] and allows Evolution to use AbiWord to read emails [unimelb.edu.au].
Re:is there anything like this coming out?? (Score:2)
Anyways, about the lack of a grammar check engine (some other poster was whining about it...Would this work?
1: Make a database that has every word in the dictionary. Have a field for Word, Thesaurus, "All Possible types of Grammar". (this is a nasty step)
2: Write associations code for sentance creation. This is where tense checking will come up. Also nasty is the code for "grammar type" detection. I'm guessing you could use queries to a internal database (internal as in editable file)
3: Then write the pretties code, like apostrophie addition code, undoubling accidently doubled letters, applying 1 space between words. I'm meaning all the stuff that makes Office2K look pretty.
I look at this and I see lots of man hours on that huge database. Still if we had that database done, would it be possible for the grammar code be written into ABIword?
Thank you
Re:is there anything like this coming out?? (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/link/
We plan to work with them for a grammar checker.
Re:WordNet (Score:2)
Re:is there anything like this coming out?? (Score:4, Funny)
Word Processor Alternatives (Score:3, Insightful)
Grammar Checking... (Score:4, Interesting)
Thus, I end up using MS Word for these things, not only because my professors only deal with MS Word format, but also because of the added feature of grammar checking. However, MS Word isn't exactly perfect in this respect. I do large amounts of my writing in the University computer labs, on their mass installs of MS Word, which only deal in English. Microsoft charges extra for increased language support in Word (last I checked it was a fairly sizable amount of money too). But I digress...
Unfortunately, its hard to break the MS Word strangle hold not only because of the file format being so nasty to deal with, but also the fact that MS has developed a very good and useful feature in its grammar checker.
Re:Grammar Checking... (Score:2, Informative)
See: http://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/link/
We've already discussed collaboration and have the beginnings of a plugin.
Re:Grammar Checking... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Grammar Checking... (Score:5, Informative)
You might the Unix utilities "style" and "diction." They don't do "grammar" checking per say (i.e., they don't cite passive voice or subject-verb agreement) but this is rather simple stuff that you should catch anyways.
Diction identifies (and suggests remedies for) commonly misused phrases and lengthy sentences. Style evaluates the complexity of [sections of] your document.
I don't think that I'm describing them very well, but, as an academic, I've found them (along with wordnet and ispell) to be indispensible. And they're probably already installed on your system. Check 'em out.
The homepage: http://www.gnu.org/software/diction/diction.html
Re:Grammar Checking... (Score:5, Funny)
You might the Unix utilities yourself, Yoda.
Strong in this one the force is.
Re:Grammar Checking... (Score:2)
No, no, no...you've got it all wrong. You obviously don't understand anything about how the American education system works (wink, wink).
College is were you're supposed to learn this stuff. This is why virtually all serious four-year universities in the US have what they call a "core" requirement (I'm thinking Ivy League schools and their peers). Basically, you spend your first two years of college writing papers on literature, political philosophy and history. You might also get in a couple math classes.
Your third and fourth year of college is where you start taking only relevant classes.
Some people call this "liberal" or "liberal arts" education. It's funny because the US is the only country I know of that follows "the great European tradition of liberal education." I don't know of too many foreign universities with a "Great Books" program. French and German engineers don't have to take political philosophy courses in college. In fact, they probably won't take any polisci in the last couple years of high school.
Now, you try to get into a math grad school in the US with your BS and good grades, and you'll have a good chance; but why? Because schools can only take so many Hungarian and Romanian mathematicians who've actually been doing mathematics since high school.
But I digress; your question was about what you're supposed to learn in high school. As far as I can tell, the answer is nothing. You're supposed to spend high school "developing your individuality" through "extra-curricular activities," such as driving to McDonald's and playing sports.
Re:Grammar Checking... (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree.
Always save your documents as RTF, which has all the features you need, and send them in that format to any MS Word user. Not a single one will complain, most won't even notice. All word processors translate RTF flawlessly.
Interoperability is a problem when THEY use Word and YOU have to read their docs, then, if they inserted an image inside a table using a floating picture allignment layout, or some other stupid lazy usagage of Word, you'll have a problem opening them since it'll probably be distorted.
Re:Grammar Checking... (Score:3, Interesting)
Just because something is easy to do, doesn't make it stupid or the doer lazy. Software is supposed to make things easier for the user.
Re:Grammar Checking... (Score:5, Insightful)
The best method by far (IMHO) is to have someone else proofread your writing. If he is also a writer, you can trade. When proofreading your own work, errors will often slip by, because your brain knows what _should_ be on the page.
It's also very helpful to read a lot of edited material (books, newspapers, etc.). _The_Elements_of_Style_ is a nice guide.
Re:Grammar Checking... (Score:2)
Grammatik has also been sold independently (Score:2)
Re:Grammar Checking... (Score:2)
I am not a grammar Nazi, but I find a thesaurus more of an enemy than a tool. I've revised hundreds of papers for friends and family, and it always obvious when someone with the vocabulary of a gnat has overdosed on the use of a thesaurus.
Grammar checkers are only useful tools for people who already have at least a basic understanding of grammar. Too many times, I've watched my wife or my friends blindly make a change suggested by Word because they assumed that Word was infallible.
Yes, I've probably made numerous grammatical errors above, so there is no need for a wit to point them out.
Re:Grammar Checking... (Score:2)
I've got a friend that I webmaster a news site for. He gets all kinds of mail, press releases, editorials, and such coming at him. He's pretty good with grammar, but trying to proof that much information just isn't reasonable for that amount of content.
For this reason, more than almost any other, I have not fully endorsed the notion that he should run any kind of *nix. It would simply cost him way too much time and effort for this one feature available in Word.
The only point I'm trying to make here is that there are other uses for grammar utilities than just having a person check their own work. I would imagine many other folks also run sanity checks on written material through Word prior to publishing.
Too sadly true. Thing is, grammar checking in bulk is probably more of a time consuming task for a human than spell checking. Grammatical errors tend to be far more subtle, and many times invisible until the sentence is spoken aloud.
Re:Grammar Checking... (Score:2)
Perhaps you should learn your grammar before going to university?
Re:Grammar Checking... (Score:2)
When I was in University, I took some French writing classes. Being a CS/Math guy, I did all my papers in LaTeX. I even wrote scripts to translate my ISO-8859-1 text that I input using Emacs to standard LaTeX escape characters, since I didn't want to have to deal with Babyl.
However, this teacher wanted Word documents. So I installed Word 2000 on my laptop under VMware. Word didn't like how my text had line breaks - it expected no line breaks within a paragraph. So I wrote another script to translate my normal text into this one-line-per-paragraph format (there's also an emacs mode that does this automatically, but I didn't bother with that). So, I eventually got it so I could just copy over a text file, import into Word, change the style of the whole thing from 'plain text' to 'normal' and send it off.
Then I discovered Word's spelling and grammar check. I had given up on these for English documents long ago since it can't handle anything more complicated than Hemingway, and my writing looks more like Hawthorne.
Word's grammar check for French is amazing. Half my papers needed to be emailed and were done in this hybrid write-in-emacs import-to-word-and-grammar-check fashion, and half my papers were just written in Emacs/LaTeX. I received better grades on the papers that had gone through Word's grammar check.
Now, my French isn't horrible, but, like most non-native speakers, I have lots of problems remembering gender; this isn't really a grammar problem (I know my grammar), but more of a vocabulary problem, since there are a lot of words whose gender you just have to memorize (you can also figure out a lot of words just by their endings, but not all words). Word would catch all of these errors - not just the really simple stuff like articles, but also making adjectives agree when they were in a completely different part of the sentence than the object. It's actually quite impressive.
I still used Emacs to write my documents, just because I can't stand this idiotic point-and-click editing (I have to use the arrow keys to move the point!?). I had also gotten used to Mule's 'french-postfix' input method, and I couldn't get used to the weird azerty keyboard layout in Windows.
Honestly, I completely hate Word, and all other "word processors," and would rather avoid them if at all possible. If someone could write a unix command-line grammar check that's as good as Word's, I would be very happy. If someone else could incorporate into Emacs, like how ispell works with flyspell-mode, I would be even happier.
Re:Grammar Checking... (Score:4, Funny)
[C]an anybody tell me why the use of active voice is preferred over passive voice?
I'm certain you meant to ask: Can anyone tell me why people prefer active voice to passive voice?
Re:Grammar Checking... (Score:2)
They go on to point out that active voice is not always better. One good use of passive voice is in emphasizing passivity as in ``the old lady was attacked'' rather than ``someone attacked the old lady.''
--Ben
Re:Grammar Checking... (Score:4, Informative)
Suggestions (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Suggestions (Score:2)
Did you submit the news to slashdot? If you did and it got rejected then your comment is reasonable. If not, why didn't you? If everyone had your mentality then the only stuff on slashdot would be the stuff CmdrTaco finds.
Do you get a kick out of the elite feeling of knowing news no one else knows or are you just too lazy to fill out a submission?
Sorry if this sounds harsh, it's not meant to be a troll. I'm just sick of people whining about the fact that slashdot occasionally gets (oh the humanity!) week-old news. I can understand if it's news from the 70s or 1995 or if it's repeated but week-old?
Cool, but.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Even Word sometimes chokes and dies on them.
My point is, when I see "import Word documents", I can't help but think, "But what kind of Word documents?". I got burned too many times trying to convince my officemates to go away from MS and Office. Those documents are now a shrine for me: parse and display these, and you've won. Otherwise, don't even try to claim you can import Word.
Re:Cool, but.. (Score:2)
I'm intrigued by the '20 times smaller than Word' that AbiWord is described as, but if it can't handle nonstandard documents, it's useless to me as well...
AbiWord beats SO and Word, better fallback (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway, AbiWord is the _only_ tool that's successfully opened up everything I've thrown at it. In particular, stuff from Mac Word tends to choke StarOffice and, oh, MS Word (gotta love that 'standard', as you note sometimes it can't handle its own stuff!)
And their 'automatic detection' kicks ass. I _hate_ the concept that I have to figure out which version of Word something was created in-- hello, isn't that the programs job?
My guess is the AbiWord people implemented good fallback/failsafe stuff, so that format trouble is 'guessed at and warned' rather than simple core dumped.
Given AbiWord, I've now weaned myself entirely off MS products (including Windows) for everything except my big dumb game box in the basement (ooh, Serious Sam II!)
MS should buy AbiWord and just replace their product with it
Re:AbiWord beats SO and Word, better fallback (Score:2)
If AbiWord has successfully opened everything you've thrown at it, you don't really have any complex docs. IIRC, AbiWord doesn't handle tables, for example.
OTOH OpenOffice has really shined with docs AbiWord couldn't handle. It actually did so well that I ended up uninstalling AbiWord and only use OpenOffice now.
Re:Cool, but.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Come to think of it, I've got a few files like that too -- old files from MS Word for Macintosh circa 5.0 (ie about 10 years old). MS Word (Windows versions) can sometimes be coaxed and coerced into reading them, but only with the proper filters installed (which aren't by default).
I guess by your rules even Word shouldn't claim it can import Word.
Re:Cool, but.. (Score:2)
Most developers I have spoken to generally dismiss it; either "there' just some things that won't work" is the line I always hear.
>I guess by your rules even Word shouldn't claim it can import Word.
Yep. Exactly. Of course when I say that, I'm either a zealot or a freak/idiot/etc. Apparently the rest of the world has no problems with documents like this.
Re:Cool, but.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you considered the very real possibility that the problem isn't the import filters, but some corrupted doc files? Especially earlier versions of Word did not much care for "open > edit > save > open > edit > save > rinse > repeat". Repetitive edits of the same document tend to start mucking things up.
You might try copy and pasting your files clean. If offending document can open, copy everything outta there and paste into a new doc.
I know it sounds like a cheap hack, but I have seen this work. With that fresh, and free of extra cruft, document you might want to try some of those import filters again. They may still not work fully, but at least they've been given a fair test.
Re:Cool, but.. (Score:2)
I had a particular one today that somehow managed to get two lines of text formatted in such a way that each character was allegedly on a separate page, but the two lines displayed perfectly on screem. Only the page counter in the status bar gave it away. Any attempt to open it in Word (97 - 2002) resulted in endless repaginating.
Staroffice 5.2 however read it fine, and was able to save it back as a word document, good as new.
This sort of corruption has happend a few times, and SO 5.2 has always managed to open the file fine.
I guess sometimes it helps to use an import filter.
I'm surprised that Microsoft... (Score:2, Insightful)
...not saying that either side is right, but there's always room for some more Microsoft bashing in this world.
Re:I'm surprised that Microsoft... (Score:2, Informative)
But anyway, I don't think Word is a trademark, that would be ludicrous.
Check this [microsoft.com] page for more.
My Review of AbiWord for Open CD (Score:3, Informative)
Website: http://www.abiword.com/
Licence: GNU General Public Licence
Operating System: Windows, Mac OS X, UNIX (including Linux), BeOS
Size: 4MB
Tested on: Windows 98
Major Propertary Competitors: Microsoft Word Screenshot: [N/A] Ease of Use Review:
Interface (9/10)
Suprise! Suprise! Anyone who ever used Microsoft Word before should have no problem using AbiWord, as the interface is modeled after it. Very easy to find formating functions and there are even the red lines under misspelled words. Help System (6/10)
While the help system is very detailed, it is not easy to navigate. Lack of a "search" feature is also a minus. It would be best if the authors of AbiWord compiled the HTML files into a single Windows
Jebus! This thing is fast! In the test, AbiWord loaded 6 times faster then Microsoft Word. It's lack of any bloat really gives it a advantage on Microsoft Word on both loading of the program, opening/saving documents, and running on lower end systems. Overall (8/10)
AbiWord is a great alternative to Microsoft Word for most uses. Most of the important features that exist in Microsoft Word exist in AbiWord, however I miss grammar check. It supports *.doc files well, and autoamticly ignores objects it doesn't know in the MS Word file.
AbiWord Rocks (Score:4, Informative)
I've been following AbiWord development for a while, and I'm still amazed by this little piece of software. I use it for all my small- and medium-sized documents (anything larger and I use LyX [lyx.org]), and I love it.
One of the strong points of AbiWord is there's all sorts of nice "little things" features, such as the ability to import and export PalmDoc and PsionWord documents (I have both a PalmOS handheld and a Psion/EPOC/Symbian/whatever handheld). The lack of tables is a drag, but once that's added, I think this will truly be the perfect lightweight word processor. None of that useless bloat a la MS Office, just the features 99% of people need 99% of the time. Kudos to the AbiWord team.
Re:g asshole vagina mouth (Score:2)
graspee
WordPerfect (Score:5, Insightful)
I no longer have any need for Word thanks to OpenOffice; perhaps AbiWord will permit me to eliminate the last of my proprietary applications from my desktop.
Wow (Score:2)
Lets hear it for table support! (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, using abiword for my work is totally useless. While abiword has attacked the home market user, it hasn't paid much attention to the business user. By far the biggest piece of functionality abiword lacks is table support. I can't think of a single document (mostly technical I guess) I've had to write for work which did not somewhere in the document contain a table. Unfortunately abiword simply doesn't support tables, and trying to import a word document with tables, the tables just get flattened with linefeeds instead of cells. I'm not even sure how you could write a lab report using abiword without table support. Maybe you could make a table in gnumeric and paste in an image.
This is very unfortunate because everything else about abiword is quite spectacular. It is so much lighter weight then openoffice, and so much more of a pleasure to use, but, unfortunately, I'll have to continue using openoffice for a little whlie longer.
If I could program C or C++ worth a damn, I would definately do something about this! (That and allowing gnumeric to import a tab delimited file form the commandline). Alas, these Java hands of mine are useless! I feel like I should be able to help, and not just complain it. But I really can't. Maybe I can go bake the abiword people some cookies instead.
Re:Lets hear it for table support! (Score:2)
You can't write a proper lab report with Microsoft Word either. Try TeX.
Re:Lets hear it for table support! (Score:3, Informative)
AbiWord (Score:3, Interesting)
Clocking in at 4.3 megs for the windows version, AbiWord is TINY! Upon installing it the license agreement came up:
"The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users"
I know most open source users find this run-of-the-mill, but i'm a stright up windows guy. Not only was reading the license enjoyable but it was very easy to read. (note to myself: why am I not running GNU software more often??*** see below)
Abiword is FAST FAST FAST. I've used Sun's OpenOffice a couple of times but I didn't really care for it all that much. Abiword's layout is clean and neat as well. I find it painfully distracting to see a billon icons on the top toolbar on some word processing apps. This is a plus for me at least.
I also like how AbiWord handles multiple instances of documents. A totally seperate window for each document. I use notepad for word processing (don't laugh!) so i'm used to this. From time to time i also use Word 2000 and I don't really care for the window behind a window layout of it at all.
Needless to say for 4.3 megs is a very efficient program that's fast, easy to use, and free.
---
*** - (any one know of a easy to use linux distro for an IBM pent 133 Thinkpad 760E 32meg ram/1gb hdd and a 3com etherlink III card?
i'd like to migrate and use X, my friend has it on his boxen and I like using it and I'd like to give it a spin, hardware specs allowing. I used caldara and corel but eh. It wasn't pretty, and i really don't know what i'm doing when it comes to getting under the hood. Any ideas, suggestions, anything are/is appreaciated!)
Re:AbiWord (Score:2)
Uh, whachoo talkin' 'bout, Willis? My copy of Word 2000 has a separate window for each document. Granted, each Window uses 14MB of RAM, but each document DOES have it's own window.
Why is the OSX version so huge? (Score:3, Interesting)
OpenOffice for OSX has just been ported too (Score:2)
This and Abiword, once Aquified, will be a good first step towards some real competition for MS Word.
Has anyone used both Abiword and the OpenOffice word processor on OSX? How do they compare?
W
Re:OpenOffice for OSX has just been ported too (Score:2)
Perhaps that'll give you an idea.
I'm really eager to finish that Cocoa version for MacOS X.
This Isn't Free Software For Windows (Score:3)
This Isn't Free Software For Windows... unless the download for the Windows source is just in an awkward spot where I can't find it. I found source downloads for FreeBSD, Linux, and MacOS X, but not Windows.
Re:This Isn't Free Software For Windows (Score:3, Informative)
You mean like at
[sourceforge.net]
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/abiword/setu
Re:This Isn't Free Software For Windows (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.abisource.com/developers/download.ph
AbiWord is 100% pure GPL (except for LGPL libraries and other bits stolen from BSD and other strange licenses.)
Martin Sevior
Congratulations on 1.0.1 and on being nice. (Score:2, Insightful)
Not only would I like to thank the AbiWord team for their incredible contribution to Free Software, I'd also like to thank them for being so nice. Working with friendly people is socially motivating. I look forward to continuing contributing any way I can (which up to now has been primarily trying to confirm bugs people report on AbiWord's Bugzilla [abiword.com]). It's a pleasure working with you, thanks for the comaraderie.
Good Job (Score:2)
Now all that needs to happen for free programs is to shake off that K-Mart feeling/image so that people will at least give them a serious try.
Yeah, but. (Score:2)
Now if it could only moderate stuff I write before I post it to slashdot, then I could sell my high karma account on ebay :)
Maybe I should email them and see if they'll put that feature in. Maybe in 2.0 they'll have a "Save to Slashdot" menu option.
Look, I don't want to spoil the party (Score:4, Interesting)
I have several hundred megabytes and several thousand files of documents written on WordStar, WordPerfect, Word 2, Word 6, Lotus (Wordpro?), Applix word and Brown Bag MindReader[1].
The documents are essentially useless to me now, the time investment I made in writing them has not paid off. I'll have to invest significantly more time and effort to make these documents usable.
Instead, I'm going to use bog standard vanilla HTML for all documents and letters in the future. That way, the time I invest in writing, articles, documentation and letters will not be wasted. I can use any HTML editor or text editor I wish and the documents will be viewable and printable from any web browser on any platform.
It would be nice if there were open standards like HTML for spreadsheets and vector graphics. I'm tired of word processors and office suites.
[1] BTW, this was a lovely DOS based word processor which guessed which word you were typing. Fantastic for technical documents using long technical terms.
Re:Look, I don't want to spoil the party (Score:4, Insightful)
I've always written my documents in plain ascii first and then opened up a copy in a word processor for formatting, or marked up a copy with HTML or LaTeX, depending on my needs... but I've always kept those original plain text copies. This has saved my ass a few times, especially when I used to use Word 97 on Windows 98 and it would impose its 'write corrupted nonsense to disk in case of system oops' feature on me.
The only inconvenient part is merging revisions back to the original.
Of Course is smaller .... than an Office Suite (Score:2, Interesting)
Not judging if its bad or good.. just dont mislead
people by compairing apples to oranges..
It's WORDPAD with spellcheck! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not even a word processor by late-1980s standards. No table support! No floating footnotes! The column support doesn't seem to allow changing the number of columns midstream--it's all or nothing.
No merge functionality! (Oh, but there are two optional, unbundled scripting plugins you can theoretically write your own merge function with--except that there's no user-defined field support, either, so any merge fields in a document would be ad-hoc, unprotected, and would show up as spelling errors.)
Great, so it's "lightweight" and starts up quickly, and it's cross-platform. Yipee. But I remember in 1988 it was pretty fair to expect a graphical word processor--even on the Amiga and the C64--to support tables and footnotes, mail merging and real, multiple-layouts-per-page column support.
Don't get me wrong. It's nice of the Abiword team to put their time into writing software they obviously find and useful, and it is nice to see a solid, genuinely useful embeddable GTK+ richtext widget come out of this, but can we please stop mentioning it in the same breath as word processors?
Re:tables???? (Score:5, Informative)
"This will allow you to create simple tables. More sophisticated table support is the major feature planned for AbiWord 1.2. The developers already know that it is needed, and are already working on it."
Re:tables???? (Score:4, Informative)
It does support Word 2000 and XP but if you find a feature for those formats that is missing, file an RFE [abisource.com].
Re:Tables, Equations, Footnotes (Score:5, Informative)
Tables and footnotes/endnotes will be in 1.2. We are overhauling the layout engine to support them.
Tables are nontrivial to implement correctly. Currently, if you really want tables, you can simulate them using tabs and over/underlining.
I started implementing endnotes[1] a while ago, but I got distracted by real life. They're not that hard, though, and once we have a new and more powerful layout engine, footnotes and endnotes should be fairly easy to implement.
[1] Footnotes go at the bottom of each page; endnotes go at the end of each section.
Re:Tables, Equations, Footnotes (Score:2)
Then in the meantime you may want to check out LyX [lyx.org], which is built on top of TeX/LaTeX. It's not as slickly polished, but damn it's useful.
Schwab
Re:They claim otherwise (Score:2)
AbiWord also lacks tables. Still a handy piece of software.
How many people use footnotes again? Not many office users. They aren't in yet, but they're coming.
Re:AbiWord's size (Score:4, Informative)
Keep in mind that OpenOffice has a lot more than AbiWord does, though...like a spreadsheet program, presentation program, etc. To say that AbiWord is 20x smaller than OpenOffice is misleading; it is, but this is because it is just a word processor and not a full-fledged office suite.
Re: (Score:2)
Some comparisons: (Score:2)
AbiWord cannot do multiple columns. Open Office can.
AbiWord has self-destructive marketing, like a blue ant as a symbol. Open Office has professional marketing. Generally, over a period of years, poor marketing means poor development, because fewer average people are attracted. I'm not against AbiWord. However, it does not help anyone if the negative issues are hidden. It is best to talk about them openly.
AbiWord is a word processor. Open Office is one coordinated suite that handles your office document needs.
AbiWord has a notably clean-looking design. It would be excellent for someone who was learning computer use, or who had a computer with limited speed and resources.
AbiWord was unable to open any of my HTML documents. Open Office allows editing of HTML (but not completely like Macromedia's expensive Dreamweaver, which is WYSIWYG).
Re:Some comparisons: (Score:2)
AbiWord has self-destructive marketing, like a blue ant as a symbol.
Yep! They should definitely go for something more professional looking [microsoft.com]. That would be much less irritating.
Re:AbiWord's size (Score:4, Informative)
openoffice is definately a M$ Office alternative for general document handling, unless you've got a marketing department. those guys will create stuff that m$ office doesn't handle properly.
Re:What use is it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Write letters and papers and documentation in a word processor, and code in an editor or development suite.
Again, sorry--but that was just a complete waste of a complaint. If I had mod points at the moment, I would mod you -1, silly.
Re:What use is it? (Score:2)
And nobody complained about it since I always send it as a PDF.
Re:So Abiword isn't IE compatible? (Score:2)
Nope. Just displays the source.
Yep XP/IE6 screws up, xp/Opera 6 doesn't (Score:2)
Re:So Abiword isn't IE compatible? (Score:2)
I wonder who these standards are written for.
Re:Font Weirdness (Score:4, Informative)
By the way, AbiWord usually stores its fonts in
Re:Font Weirdness (Score:3, Informative)
The next version will use Pango [pango.org] and FreeType [freetype.org] and, on *nix, probably client-side-fonts via xft.
I believe there are still some issues to get printing working properly with these newer *nix font solutions but we welcome any input.
Re:Font Weirdness (Score:2, Insightful)
However, the current situation is a horrible mess and in my opinion also the biggest Linux usability hurdle of them all.
Re:Header/footer? (Score:2, Interesting)
AbiWord has headers and footers, but no footnotes. I think that if you hit Ctrl-[ and Ctrl-] you get respectively the headers and footers, or you can use the edit menu.
This is a known bug [abisource.com].
Re:Microsoft really raised the bar.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Work is already underway to add Pango [pango.org] and FreeType [freetype.org] support.
Even without them our Chinese support is very good, our Hebrew support is also very good (make sure you get the bidi-build), and our Arabic support should be good but I'm not sure how much testing it has received.
So try it out with all the languages you want and file some bug reports [abisource.com]!
Re:Mac OS X support (Score:2, Informative)
We would really love some more Mac developers!
Re:Nice but weak. (Score:2)
Re:RedHat != Linux (Score:2, Informative)
From the manpage:
"(actually, checking is performed, but only warnings about conflicts are given, nothing else)"
Re:Size (Score:2)
The Windows version doesn't have this.
Re:Size (Score:2)
Re:A version 1.0 release with no tables? (Score:2)