AbiCollab Takes On Google Docs and Zoho Writer 82
msevior writes "Just released today, the free software AbiWord word processor, employed by the One Laptop Per Child project, tightly integrates with a new collaboration Web site to enable easy real-time collaborative editing of documents. AbiCollab.net also enables documents to be stored online, allows format conversion on the fly, stores the history of the docs in svn, provides direct links to HTML-ized docs that update as you save them, and allows easy sharing of docs amongst friends and groups. All in all, new competition for Google Docs and Zoho Writer, but featuring a real word processor rather than an app in a browser."
Re:Slashvertisement! (Score:5, Interesting)
1: If the suggested app is a desktop app, why compare it with Google docs or Zoho docs ?
2: The whole premise of 'taking on google docs' without having browser as a delivery mode doesn't make sense. Google docs is popular [if at all] NOT because it has more features - it is popular because it can work from within a browser. Get what I mean ? No downloads, no clients, no 'need to take my machine or harddrive with me' - get it ?
3: I'm assuming the features touted here are present in Microsoft Word through Sharepoint and/or Groove [never used both though]. So what's so innovative about this app ?
Seriously, anyone ?
Re:Slashvertisement! (Score:2, Interesting)
It's really more about the real-time collab aspect than the web app part. Abiword has had collab for a while, but it was kind of difficult to set up. Hopefully, AbiCollab makes this process simpler. Eventually, I'd like to see the collab move toward Telepathy so that I can just use my contact list and connect that way. The revisions and everything sound awesome, though.
Re:Slashvertisement! (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes. We're quite a way along the path to getting a fully fledged telepathy backend working. Like all these things in Free Software, we could do with more resources. We finally got the web interface all sorted out though, so now it's released.
You are right in that the website has lots of additional and useful features. Like having the full history of the document and extremely easy web publication of the document in pdf, html, odt rtf, docx etc.
Re:Who cares? (Score:2, Interesting)
Google, presumably, coz now the only feature their stripped down excuse for a word processor had over anything else has been added to a real wordprocessor.
Also, every company dumb enough to think storing internal docs on an out-of-house remote server is a good idea.
What is needed is a plugin for Abiword that can be used to save to *any* svn server, not just the hosted service. That way a company can ensure that their internal documents remain internal. It also means that you can *choose* to be at the whim of a service provider, or *choose* to go it alone.
Such a feature in a word processor would be a *huge* selling point to companies and savvy individuals alike, a selling point that can be used as a real benefit to offset to the very real costs of migrating away from MS Office.
Re:Is it me alone... (Score:3, Interesting)
i've found GDocs useful for sharing, but not a viable competitor to MSO or ever OO.o (in terms of features). Based on your post, i've created a Zoho account and will give it a try. i use GDocs mostly for its integration into all my other Google stuff. It's convenient to be in my GMail account and then hit Documents, and there i am. Getting my friends to go to yet another site to share stuff might annoy me and my friends, as made up as they are.
What i'd really love is for docs and email to be seamless *cough* GWave *cough*. But i don't have an invite yet.
Re:More Like Pride of Authorship (Score:3, Interesting)
OpenOffice does seem to have better compatibility -- though, oddly, AbiWord seems to create much cleaner, more human-readable ODT files than OpenOffice.
The main advantage is that AbiWord was much lighter, partly because it's just a word processor. I used to use AbiWord for word processing, Gnumeric for spreadsheets, etc. Which doesn't matter to me anymore, now that OpenOffice starts in about two seconds for me, cold or hot.
The main other advantage of OpenOffice was stability -- AbiWord used to crash a lot, but that seems to have gotten better.