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Announcements GNOME GUI Software

AbiWord 2.2 Unleashed 344

Posted by michael from the wordperfect-support-still-sucks dept.
uwog writes "AbiWord 2.2 marks a new milestone in the life of our beloved Ant. With a native port to MacOSX, and new features such as live updating tables of contents and TextBox support, Abi is finally a grown up Ant. Read the full announcement or go grab your own copy."
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AbiWord 2.2 Unleashed More

AbiWord 2.2 Unleashed

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  • I like Abiword.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by adoarns ( 718596 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @05:07PM (#10997789) Homepage Journal
    if for no other reason than it doesn't take five minutes to start up.

    • Re:I like Abiword.... (Score:3, Informative)

      by MikeXpop ( 614167 )
      Hey, I'm not alone!

      That's the main reason I use abiword. A lot of my friends who use OSS prefer OOo Writer, but I don't see why. Abiword has all the features of Word that I need, but absolutely none of the bloat. It's also one of the few open sourced programs* I can feel confident recommending to my non-geek friends, and that's saying a lot.

      *The others being Firefox and gaim
      • I have nothing against Abiword, and the fact that there is a native OS X port of it definately sits well with me, but my chief concern at the moment is compatibility; both short and long term. Personally I see OO.o as the most likely to stay around right now. I may be wrong about that, and if anyone has information to the contrary I'm more than willing to listen, but the fact that it is a full office suite which runs on 2.5 of the 3 operating systems that I deal with makes me feel secure in using it.

        My log

    • Re:I like Abiword.... (Score:2, Informative)

      by KingPunk ( 800195 )
      i too like abiword, but if you prelink your libraries and stuff,
      with OOo you'd see a significant response time jump.
      and another big issue with abiword is that it more often than not,
      doesn't read or make compatable MS Documents.
      ...which sucks in any really "productive" enviroment.

      just thought i'd add my $0.02
      --kingpunk

    • Re:I like Abiword.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by n4t3 ( 266019 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @05:27PM (#10997922) Homepage Journal
      I've been using 2.2.0 for a few weeks after receiving a link to it from the Abisource team (I reported a problem which the new version fixed) and I've been comparing it with MS Office v.X Word on my 700MHz iBook. I've had troubles with images in AbiWord. I won't go into it but suffice to say I haven't had good luck opening doc files with images. It also seems to have problems with long documents - it really bogs down compared to Word. The fonts are really nice and crisp though on my machine, nicer than my version of Word (admitedly not the latest version of Word). Abiword does still crash occassionally on my OSX10.3.6 though less than in past versions. I will continue to follow AbiWord as it clearly has promise, but its still not replacing Word for me yet.

      • Re:I like Abiword.... (Score:3, Informative)

        by downhole ( 831621 )
        I just grabbed it and tried it with a few documents. So far, it doesn't seem to like images. It didn't display them in simpler documents, and died on a complex one On the plus side, it's smaller and faster then anything else (except maybe TextEdit), and appears to work fine with text and tables. I appreciate the simplicity too - it's nice to have a functional word processor that doesn't try to do everything under the sun. The real test, though, is interoperability with most versions of MS Word.

      • Bug fixes (Score:2, Interesting)

        by bvankuik ( 203077 )
        Attention, everyone. This guy logged a bug and it got actually fixed in the next version. That's a lot better than OOo's trackrecord (I've logged a bug which is heading towards two years and not fixed). This really says something about the development team, enthousiastic and not bogged down by crazy procedures.

        • Re:Bug fixes (Score:3, Interesting)

          by n4t3 ( 266019 )
          This much is true. The response from the team was immediate. I had downloaded a release from the site, found an issue with text selection highlighting not working as expected and reported it that night through their Bugzilla reporting system. Turns out they had fixed the issue in 2.1.99 but it wasn't available on the site for download for OSX so they sent me a link to 2.2.0 which did indeed fix that issue for me. So to be fair, they had already identified and corrected the issue I logged before I logged

        • Re:Bug fixes (Score:3, Insightful)

          by JeffTL ( 667728 )
          The difference is that AbiWord is truly a non-profit effort -- the purpose is to produce a nice word processor, not provide a base for StarOffice.

    • if for no other reason than it doesn't take five minutes to start up.

      What takes five minutes to start up? If you mean OpenOffice.org, it takes exactly 20 seconds to start up on my 1 GHz desktop, and after that it's nimble as anything else.

      Abiword doesn't work for me because it just isn't stable under Windows. Out of curiosity (to see whether support for OpenOffice's document format existed yet) I tried using Abiword 2.2 to open an OpenOffice generated xml file. The software crashed without a trace -

      • If you mean OpenOffice.org, it takes exactly 20 seconds to start up on my 1 GHz desktop, and after that it's nimble as anything else.p. Which, while not 5 minutes, is still unacceptably slow, unless you're starting a 5-hour essay writing session, in which 20 seconds is insignificant.

  • localized fonts? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Janek Kozicki ( 722688 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @05:09PM (#10997800) Journal
    last time I checked (1.7 version), Abiword had terrible problems with fonts, especially with country-specific characters.

    If you are non-english person - how's Abiword working for you?

    • Re:localized fonts? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'm non-english.. I'm american, works good! Enjoy your tea and crumpets.
      • Sorry, but this sort of trolls me a bit. Im english from the UK, and have written an app which has 10's of thousands of copies here in greece (a greek/english dictionary). I wish you US folks would recognise (when u design stuff) that there is another world out there.

        My app was *asked for* by MS's localization people. Six months later the MSDN official stuff
        for greek was (well we scored 100% to my extreme surprise)...

        Nuff said.

        Please don't be so limited when you write apps. Think global...

        Even if only o
      • Only in America do they mod a joke as insightful...

    • Re:localized fonts? (Score:2, Informative)

      by tessdfield ( 837034 )
      Well, the Windows version uses uniscribe by default now, so the situation may have improved (1.x was quite a while ago too, so if you're on unix it will have improved there as well). There are some known issues with bidi support on Mac OS X and there are also known issues with Arabic, Indic, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese scripts, but that's because no one has volunteered to assist the developers in improving the existing support.

    • Re:localized fonts? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Vlad_the_Inhaler ( 32958 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @05:17PM (#10997859)
      Quoting the article, which you appear not to have read:
      Among the new features in AbiWord 2.2 are:

      * A MacOSX port
      * Tables of contents
      * Document history/revisions
      * Text frames
      * Better support for international scripts and locales
      * List folding
      * Text wrapping around images
      * Faster rendering
      * Dashboard integration
      * Visual drag and drop

      This release also includes an enormous number of bug fixes and improvements across the board.
    • It does seem to support Unicode on Windows now.
    • The older vesion 2.0.6 could not handle Urdu (Nafees web) fonts. Abi could display individual characters, but could not join them. I have not checked this version. The KDE apps do handle these fonts well, whereas Gnome apps fail (firefox even with pango enabled). Interestingly, Gaim does a much better job, but has a problem with a few characters. For Urdu, KDE is the way to go.

  • "Unleashed" (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 04, 2004 @05:09PM (#10997806)
    this whole macho rambo attitude with words like "unleashed" and software "to do battle" is partially why OSS still isn't mainstream. This is not a teen male fantasy game.

  • Does a standalone WP have a use now? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ShatteredDream ( 636520 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @05:10PM (#10997812) Homepage
    The appeal of Office suites is that you can create a document of some kind in one, and import data from another component. With OpenOffice, KOffice and Microsoft Office you have a pretty robust toolset for creating documents with mixed data. Where is AbiWord going to go along these lines? Are we going to see "AbiExcel?"

    I seem to remember that in the beginning, the group was going to put out an entire office suite, but then got bogged down just trying to create the word processing component. A small and dedicated userbase, aside does Abiword have a future without these other components?

    • Re:Does a standalone WP have a use now? (Score:4, Informative)

      by tessdfield ( 837034 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @05:21PM (#10997879)
      AbiSource will integrate AbiWord with other GNOME Office apps instead of creating a new spreadsheet (Gnumeric), presentation (Criawips), or database (GNOME-DB) component.

    • Re:Does a standalone WP have a use now? (Score:5, Informative)

      by poofyhairguy82 ( 635386 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @05:25PM (#10997909) Journal
      First of all, Abiword is part of an office suite: gnome-office [gnome.org].


      Are we going to see "AbiExcel?"

      How about Gnumeric? [gnome.org].

      But does it matter is Abiword is part of a suite? I use it on Linux because I need a good Word Processor, and Abiword takes less overhead and looks better than the OO writer. But each to his own...

    • I vote for AbiPoint.

    • Re:Does a standalone WP have a use now? (Score:5, Informative)

      by msevior ( 145103 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @05:56PM (#10998072)
      No Need for AbiExcel. Gnumeric is the spreadsheet of gnome-office and we will continues to improve integration with it. Gnumeric now works well on Windows. Other gnome-office type apps will bubble out of the GNOME incubator into the rest of the world too.

      For now Abiword copies and pastes nices with gnumeric. Select a region in gnumeric, copy, paste into word, you get a nice table containing Gnumeric's contents.

      Not full embedding yet but we'll get there.
    • Yes, for writers.

      Not technical writers, but writer-writers: journalists, novelists, what have you.

      The keys are to support all OS's, full unicode and manymany languages, and the features actual writers need.

      One of the things I dislike about MS Word (2000) is that soooooo many of its features are geared towards, well, office document production.

      That makes perfect sense for the bulk of their market, but whenever I find myself writing, say, a non-technical magazine article, it makes me want to scream.

      Plus
      • If you write books you really should try Docbook. It is relatively easy to learn (compared to Tex) and allows you to concentrate on the content. Later you can write and tinker with a stylesheet or let your publisher do that for you since it separates content and layout completely.
    • I tried using KWord for a while this year, and it just wasn't very good -- constant crashes (as well as various other issues). OpenOffice is just way too bloated, and the licensing issues are a real hassle (especially since I run FreeBSD -- just installing Java on FreeBSD is a hassle due to licensing issues).

      The basic problem with the ${foo}Office suites is that they run counter to one of the basic principles of good software design, which is to write a small tool that does one job really well.

      Another thi

      • Really, the best all-around word processor is TeX, but AbiWord seems like the best tool I've found so far for little quick jobs where TeX would be too much trouble.

        For most of the power of TeX without a lot of the hassle, try LyX [lyx.org]. It's a graphical front-end for LaTeX, with an interface akin to a word processor. However, it still applies TeX philosophy, namely, you supply the content and it will supply the layout, you don't need to mess with that.
        • Here's what I have in my notes from when I tried LyX:
          • To get good-looking PDF output (not ugly bitmapped fonts), Edit>Preferences>Outputs, change dvips to dvips -Ppdf. Actually, this doesn't help; still looks bad in xpdf, even worse in acroread. Also, uses yukky nonstandard widgets with nonstandard behaviors.
          • To get good-looking PDF output (not ugly bitmapped fonts)...

            Well, for what it's worth, to get good-looking PDF output, I suggest dvipdf. It's all anti-aliased, etc. etc. and looks fine in Acrobat Reader, etc. Output from dvips looks good when printed, which you'd expect, since it outputs a PostScript file.

            • Re:Does a standalone WP have a use now? (Score:4, Informative)

              by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @08:52PM (#10998912) Homepage Journal
              To get good looking PDF output out of a LaTeX document (whihc is all LyX produces really) you ought to be using pdflatex, which goes straight from LaTeX to PDF, no intermediary DVI form. If you include useful modules like hyperlinks you can automatically create document structure links for Acrobat to read, as well as having all your ref's and cite's be clickable links within the PDF. As an added bonus pdflatex supports jpg and png image types, so there's no messing around with converting your images to eps.

              Jedidiah.

        • I dig LyX but I have switched to Kile LaTeX Editor [sourceforge.net] (KDE Project) due to the skeletal support of the Memoir Class within LyX, amongst various other classes that may not be as commonly requested and therefore aren't natively supported in LyX. Both are wonderful applications.

          I equate LyX and its WYSIWYM to be getting better yet too often I have to insert ERT and so I decided to just learn LaTeX directly and write in Kile. I build chapter templates quite simply with Kile. Customizing the appearance of ou

      • OpenOffice is just way too bloated, and the licensing issues are a real hassle (especially since I run FreeBSD -- just installing Java on FreeBSD is a hassle due to licensing issues).

        Are you trolling, or just ignorant?

        OpenOffice.org is LGPL licensed. LGPL is GPL compatible. It only requires java for a small number of functions (I've never used any of them).

        Stop spreading FUD please, we're already fighting MS hard enough.
    • With OpenOffice, KOffice and Microsoft Office you have a pretty robust toolset...

      Correction: With OpenOffice and KOffice, you have a pretty robust toolset. With Microsoft Office, you have an ugly crash-prone unreliable and slow headacheset.

      Other than that, you are correct.

  • What's the point (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    now that we have OpenOffice?
    Also, aren't word processors kind of backwards compared to typesetting systems?

    • What's the point now that we have OpenOffice?

      Define "we".

      Ever try to run OpenOffice on Mac OSX? It's not pleasant. Instead of using the native Aqua widgets, it uses X-Windows widgets, and requires you to run the X-Windows subsystem in order to run.

      It works, but it's not terribly pleasant, and doesn't integrate well with the rest of the system. AbiWord, for all of its warts, is significantly better integrated into the OS.

      I'm looking forward to the day when OpenOffice has a proper OSX distribution, b


    • First, there are many ways to implement the same functionality. Some code is better than other code. Some apps are better at some things than others. There is no one magic bullet, and I hope it stays that way. Why? When you start to settle on one platform, on one way of doing things, the creative waters that were once a rushing river, dwindle to a stagnant puddle. Cancerous dynamics start to intrude on the process, and soon you've got a mess that no one will touch. Where does that leave you?

      (Look at the go

  • How can it be? (Score:5, Funny)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi AT yahoo DOT com> on Saturday December 04, 2004 @05:10PM (#10997816) Journal
    I thought word processors had to take up 3 CDs and had to have toolbars taking up half the screen.

    I don't feel comfortable with this - it must be some sort of devilish sorcery!

  • Mac, Linux and Windows (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tachys ( 445363 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @05:12PM (#10997829)
    Finally, a word processor that works on Macintosh, Windows and Linux.

    No Openoffice on Xfree86 does not count

  • Default font for Abi Word? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 04, 2004 @05:18PM (#10997865)
    One of the earlier comments mentioned problems with fonts. I don't have any problems. I just use the regular default font for AbiWord...
    AbiNormal

    Thank-you, thank-you, I'll be here all week...
  • How does AbiWord relate to an "Ant"?

  • "Native" Mac version (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 04, 2004 @05:25PM (#10997911)
    While the Mac version may be native, it doesn't feel like a Mac application.

    Text drag & drop isn't integrated with the rest of the system, some of the text editing commands (like alt-forward-delete) just don't work, the buttons in the save-before-closing? dialog are in the wrong order and have the wrong titles, and there is just a subtle feeling of... alienness... over the entire GUI.

    People who use AbiWord on other platforms should feel right at home but most Mac users will be turned off.

    • Re:"Native" Mac version (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hey guys,

      I'm just one person, with occasional bits of help from others. I'm working on making AbiWord behave like a native app, but I must confess that although I have been using Macs for over four years I don't have a particularly exact view of how native apps are supposed to behave.

      Anyway, the Cocoa port is very much a work in progress, and any suggestions / complaints should be filed in Abi's bugzilla.

      Don't forget to check for latest development information at:
      http://www.abisource.com/~fjf/

      This is fr

  • Ant? (Score:2)

    by antdude ( 79039 )
    AbiSource doesn't use its mascot, Ant, anymore. :(

  • Keeping up appearances (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TimmyDee ( 713324 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @05:41PM (#10998010) Homepage Journal
    The Mac OS X port is certainly coming along nicely. Just the fact that it uses Aqua widgets is a Good Thing, but it still has a long way to go in the picky world of Mac users. I'm not saying they haven't put any effort into it (because they certainly have -- just look at the splash screen and the disk image background along with the general Aqua appearance). It's just that a lot of Mac users are really, really, really picky when it comes to how their apps look and behave. Hell, look at Firefox. It's come a long way with the look and feel, but there are still a ton of people who complain that the web page widgets aren't OS native.

    Here's what I've noticed in AbiWord 2.2 so far. The buttons look very 10.0 and there is still some issues with ghosting or artifacting (whatever you want to call it) as you move the tabs across the rulers. The save dialog boxes aren't sheets. The formatting toolbar has some issues with dual monitors (it puts the styles menu on my secondary screen when the pull-down is close to the edge of the primary). Also, the toolbars must be treated as windows themselves, because clicking on the menu bar disables many of the menu options, making me think the document window isn't completely "active". On the positive, I'm glad there are live resizing windows and a good preferences interface. It's closer, but there's still a bit of polish to put on it before Mac users accept it with open arms.

    • Re:Keeping up appearances (Score:5, Informative)

      by tessdfield ( 837034 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @05:46PM (#10998027)
      The longer these issues are kept out of Bugzilla, the longer they persist (yes, that's a request for you to add them to Bugzilla [abisource.com] ;))

    • Re:Picky Mac users (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Bastian ( 66383 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @09:40PM (#10999121)
      I think the pickiness of Mac users has a lot to do with the environment. I use both Mac OS X and Linux ab out equally often. On the Mac, I find that I get incredibly annoyed with bad user interfaces, whereas I barely even notice it in Linux.

      It's really not about Mac users. It's that on the Mac there's so much uniformity in how applications look and behave (admittedly much more so on OS 9 than OS X) that your brain gets into a rut and really expects everything to work that way. Suddenly going from this to a Unixy app is like having the orientation of the ground you're standing on shift without warning - it's not going to be an entirely pleasant experience.

      Compare this to a straight Unix environment, using all sorts of X apps. Every single app (more or less) behaves a little differently, uses slightly different widgets, uses different keyboard commands, and all that. It's like being on a boat - when the surface you're standing on tilts to the side, it's no problem because it's constantly swaying back and forth, and you expect it.

      This is probably the core of why I have a Linux install separate from OS X. When I'm booted into Linux, I love old stand-by apps like the GIMP and OO.org. But an hour later I might be booted into OS X and running a Fink install on them and find them to be the most baneful travesties imaginable.
    • Just FYI, I know that sheets are the "correct" way of showing dialogs, but I personally can't stand them. You can't move a sheet out of the way of the text below it... often I don't know what filename to give a saved file because there's a big sheet in the way that can't be moved. So I have to close the save sheet, then find the text I need, then choose save again. Pain in the ass.

  • First impressions from a MacOS X User (Score:4, Informative)

    by Llywelyn ( 531070 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @05:47PM (#10998030) Homepage
    Before we begin, let me emphasize that I have no strong need for a word processor, using various LaTeX tools when I need something high level and professional, and only keep a word processor around for opening other people's documents and quick/small work. When I do use one, Mellel is generally my word processor of choice.

    I don't use MS Word.

    A word processor for me has to integrate pretty seamlessly with the operating system--it has to look and feel like a MacOS X application--so I focused on where AbiWord falls short of that mark in this review.

    Using it on a 12" PowerBook:

    * It initially takes up an enormous amount of screen real-estate, with the main window stretching down into my dock where I have to move the window to get to it.

    * Korean input was a little funky compared to normal MacOS X entry. It showed up okay, but the intermediate steps don't display.

    * The same appears to be true of all special character/multi-key entry (such as option-e e to generate an accented e). The end result shows up fine, but the intermediary display for what I am doing is nonexistent.

    * The initial display of the tool palette is largely redundant with the tool bars.

    * Slow when on a highish processor load. I type text and it hesitates a moment before displaying it. This is noticeably worse than the rest of the system under the same load.

    * Some standard command keys do not work as they should (e.g., command-t). Others are just strange (command-. is "paste unformatted").

    * Highlighting is strange, reversing the color of the highlighted text. It also feels slow and clunky.

    * On the plus side, it now seems to use the system dictionary for spelling, which is a Good Thing&#153;.

    * It doesn't support drag-and-drop from the desktop or to other apps.

    * It doesn't always like pasting PDF clips copied out from other documents (namely TeXShop).

    * Nonstandard save dialogue that gives options "No" [space] "Yes" and "Cancel" with the default going to "Cancel."

    Solid, they've made a lot of improvement since I last used it (particularly on MacOS X), but it isn't there yet.

  • The way I understand it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @06:13PM (#10998159) Homepage
    ... is that OO is a complete suit, but the word processor part isnt as MSWord compliant as Abiword. Abiword is more MSWord compatible, and is standalone. They both startup slow and take more memory than good quality opensource software should.

    When OO was new, I thought it was the Abiword killer.

    I also dont quite get why Abiword isnt packaged as a part of OO. License incompatibility?

    Lastly, I'm waiting for the firefox of word processors, something sleek and lean, fast, stable, with only the functionality I need, yet compliant with MS Word 2000. I've only needed Word and Excel, and these two applications need not be in the same office suite; only fast and compliant.
    • They both startup slow

      Platform-dependant. Starts quickly on my Mac here (867Mhz G4 Powerbook), whereas OpenOffice and NeoOffice take an age.

      Cheers,
      Ian

    • ... is that OO is a complete suit, but the word processor part isnt as MSWord compliant as Abiword.

      Perhaps that is the case for AbiWord 2.2, but not for earlier versions. AbiWord 2.0 fails for very simple Word documents, but I haven't had many problems with OOWriter, except for a very graphical 'poem' that was totally dependent on font and font size (and line breaks).

      But as OO and Abi have different release schedules, you can expect one to surpass the other at various points in time, just like IE once was

  • Well, it LOOKS nice. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rueger ( 210566 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @06:15PM (#10998170) Homepage
    Oh, I so wanted to like this. It seems simple and elegant. Sadly though a simple document, created in OpenOffice, saved as MS Word, which opens just dandy in both, is trashed horribly by AbiWord.

    Simple means: 1 logo graphic, one horizontal rule, text and a bulleted list.

    Beyond that, why oh why oh why does every word processor default to changing e-mail addresses to clickable links? If my document is formatted in black 12 pt Arial I do NOT want anything on my page changed into blue underlined Times New Roman.

    Am I alone in believing that a document intended to be printed on paper is different from a web page?

    Oh yeah - and it's slow as molasses.
    • Am I alone in believing that a document intended to be printed on paper is different from a web page?

      Nope. Get a Text Processor instead of a Word Processor and all will be well - you can define your output type when you run it on your source file.

      Good Text Processor's include: TeX (and family eg. LaTex), and groff/nroff. If you want to produce good looking printed material, both are excellent. Beware the learning curve though.

      Jedidiah.

  • Does the Windows port now support text folding?
    Last time I tried this feature it wasn't working on Windows.

    Also, what is the status of Gnumeric on Windows?

    Thanks to everybody who contributed to these products. I think they are excellent.
  • Is anyone else noticing Slashdot turning more and more into FreshMeat everyday?

    Its all well and good with this software and what not, but this is just getting out of hand. News for Nerds, yeh, but there is a reason why we have places like FreshMeat :P

    -Brandon
  • Very nice indeed, but imo it should be made clear - before you download - that the OS X version is beta, with some awkward known and unknown bugs.

    Disclaimer: this remark because AbiWord is obviously targeted to non-power users...

    ps: and with KDE/mac lurking around the corner, what exciting times!
  • As many, I am forced to consider the compatibility of my documents with Microsoft's Word.

    Already a KDE user, I'd rather use KWord than install the whole GTK stack for this application. But KWord does not save in MSWord's format and the RTF it creates is wanting -- certainly so with respect to page headers/footers.

    Curiously, AbiWord does not save in MSWord's format either. Oh, it pretends to so, and the file is named .doc, but if you compare it to the .rtf version, you'll discover, that the file name ext

  • It is great to see people working on such complex software as office suites, the most used of all applications. While I haven't tried the AbiWord product, I have tried MANY others from open source to freeware to commercial products.

    While some are able to copy a subset of features of the Microsoft's Word product, none have come close to it, let alone achieving any groundbreaking functionality. This highlights the problem with open source movements. Microsoft has spent millions of dollars figuring out how

  • OpenOffice killed my AbiWord (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nice2Cats ( 557310 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @10:01PM (#10999216)
    I used AbiWord for a while, and then threw it out when OpenOffice reached 1.1.0: As nice and small as it is, OOo just lets you do more. I think that attitute might change if AbiWord moved to the common file format that OOo and Kword use by default.

    I wonder just how hard AbiWord will get hit when OOo 2.0 comes out this year. You know, an OOo that doesn't take half of the morning to start up...

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