Filed under: Text, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Office, Productivity, Open Source, Unix
AbiWord: Word Processing for Everyone
by Jay Savage Mar 7th 2007 at 5:00PM
I can't believe we haven't talked seriously about AbiWord here since version 2.0 more than 18 months ago. Shame on us. The 2.4.x releases (they're currently on 2.4.6) have seen major upgrades to nearly all the subsystems, and a host of new features including Open Document support, image handling enhancements, grammar checking, and equation editing, to name a few. For those of you who are unfamiliar, AbiWord is a powerful, full-featured, cross-platform, open source word processor. It includes plug-in support for most document formats including Word, Open Document, Open Office Writer, Word Perfect, and even Claris Works, as well as an optional equation editor and LaTeX and DocBook support.
If this sounds a lot like OpenOffice.org Writer to you, you might be forgiven. But AbiWord's motto is "Word Processing for Everyone," and they mean it. Although plans for a full Office suite are in the offing, AbiWord is currently just a word processor and all their energy goes into getting that right. For those of you with older hardware or who are just concerned about performance, AbiWord offers efficient code and a small footprint: a complete XP install including the optional plugins takes up less than 30MB on disk and uses a correspondingly small chunk of RAM. And for you Mac users out there, AbiWord offers a native Aqua interface, so no more X-11 nonsense just to get your word processor running.
Edit: Thanks to C.K. for pointing out that AbiWord on OS x isn't a universal binary yet. It's fast and stable enough, though, that you peobably won't notice it's running in Rosetta. I didn't.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Andre said 12:04AM on 3-08-2007
I tried using AbiWord once. Two days after downloading it I gave up and bought a copy of Microsoft Office Student Edition for $230 CAD, as I couldn't stand the application. It's a total piece of crap.
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roarkg said 2:11AM on 3-08-2007
Abiword is great. It's got an easy interface and it's got everything I need for basic word processing. Of course, just like MS word I didn't learn to use it in a day or two. So if you're comfortable with MS word, and don't mind paying $200+ for it, then by all means. Abiword is a viable alternative to MS Word and it has all the features the average user of MS WORD will ever use.
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Sergio Gandrus said 4:46AM on 3-08-2007
ABI Word is a good word processor.
I used it for my university work.
Few bugs but remember it's free!
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bikeham said 7:14AM on 3-08-2007
Abiword for "os x" seems to be abandoned. In it's current form it is a turkey. NeoOffice is your friend.
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bikeham said 7:27AM on 3-08-2007
Abiword for OS X has been abandoned for years. The builds available are embarrassing to the project.
NeoOffice is your friend
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daggerquill said 8:45AM on 3-08-2007
bikeham: you should take another look. Latest Mac release is 2.4.5, released in the fall. No 2.4.6 yet, but it seems to be under active development. I use it daily.
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devicerandom said 11:30AM on 3-09-2007
What are the advantages of Abiword in respect to OO.Writer? Everytime I tried Abiword on Linux as a substitute to the OO slow giant, I found it even slower and buggier than OO. IMHO Kword shows serious promise, instead, too bad it's only Unix-limited (although things should change a lot with incumbent KDE 4)
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Doug Winnie said 11:46AM on 3-09-2007
When you look at the screenshots of the OS X interface, they are pathetic, antiquated, and poorly designed. For me, cleanness of workspace and ease of use are the biggest selling points for me, and this UI on the surface, doesn't support that.
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Chuck said 10:38PM on 3-09-2007
Abiword seemed like a good idea for me, so I tried it for a couple months. But I consistently had problems importing Word docs with tables. They came out scrambled and unreadable every time. So I switched over to OO for the first time and it's worked flawless for me ever since. There are plenty of things I'd like to see improved about OO, but in terms of a working app, it survived where Abiword failed me.
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