AbiWord: Word Processing for Everyone

Filed under: Text, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Office, Productivity, Open Source, Unix

AbiWord: Word Processing for Everyone

by Jay Savage Mar 7th 2007

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.

Tags: AbiSource, AbiWord, Open Office, OpenOffice, OpenOffice.org

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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)

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.

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.

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

View more Time Wasters