AbiWord
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 AbiWord screenshot |
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| Developer(s) | The AbiWord Team |
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| Initial release | December 1, 1998 |
| Stable release | 2.6.8 / 2009-3-18 |
| Written in | C++ |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Word processor |
| License | GNU General Public License |
| Website | www.abisource.com |
AbiWord is a free software word processor. It was originally started by SourceGear Corporation as the first part of a proposed AbiSuite. Development stopped when SourceGear changed their focus to Internet Appliances. AbiWord was adopted by some Open source developers and AbiWord continued to be developed. The name "AbiWord" (pronounced "Abby Word") is derived from the root of the Spanish word "abierto", meaning "open". It runs on Linux, Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel), Microsoft Windows, ReactOS, BeOS (unsupported), Solaris, AmigaOS 4.0 (through its Cygnix X11 engine), and other operating systems.
AbiWord was originally started by SourceGear Corporation as the first component of AbiSuite, as part of a plan to create a full Office Suite that would be Free Software. SourceGear gradually moved on to other business interests, passing on control of the AbiWord project to a team of volunteer developers. AbiWord is part of GNOME Office, a collection of office applications with some degree of integration.
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[edit] Features
AbiWord supports the basic word processing features provided by Microsoft Wordpad such as lists, indents and character formats. AbiWord also supports table, styles, page header and footer, footnotes, template, multiple views, page column, spell checking, and grammar checking. [1] The Presentation view of AbiWord, which displays document in full screen, is another special feature not often found in word processors.
Abiword does not have rich presentation features such as text frame, multiple ways to anchor images, page styles, border styles for paragraphs, or in-document image editing (such as changing contrast, font work and drawing), like Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org Writer have. However, it is a faster word processing program, and its system requirements are not very high.
[edit] Interface
AbiWord has a similar user interface to classic versions (pre-Office 2007) of Microsoft Word, which is intended to ease migration for new users. Although there are differences, the AbiWord developers aim to embrace and extend this de facto standard in business.
The interface is intended to follow user interface guidelines for each respective platform.
[edit] File formats
AbiWord is packaged with several import/export filters, including HTML, Microsoft Word (DOC), Office Open XML (DOCX)[2][3], OpenDocument (ODT), Rich Text Format (RTF) and Text documents (TXT). LaTeX is supported for export only. Plug-in filters are available to deal with many other formats, notably WordPerfect documents. The native file format, .abw, uses XML, so as to mitigate vendor lock-in concerns with respect to interoperability and also digital archiving.
[edit] Grammar Check
The AbiWord project includes a grammar checking plugin using Link Grammar. AbiWord had grammar checking before any other open source word processor, although a grammar checking was later added to OpenOffice.org. Link Grammar is both a theory of syntax and an open source parser which is now[when?] developed by the AbiWord project.
[edit] Version differences
AbiWord 2.6.x does not support Windows 9x. Users of these systems can still use AbiWord 2.4.6.
[edit] See also
- List of word processors
- Comparison of word processors
- Office Open XML software
- OpenDocument software
[edit] References
- ^ "AbiWord beats OpenOffice to a Grammar Checker". Slashdot. 2005-10-15. http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/15/1312216. Retrieved on 2007-11-23. ""The recently released AbiWord-2.4...is the first Free Word Processor to offer an integrated Grammar Checker""
- ^ "AbiWord v2.6.0 Released". www.abisource.com. http://abisource.com/release-notes/2.6.0.phtml. Retrieved on 2008-03-24.
- ^ "AbiWord v2.6.5 Changelog". www.abisource.com. http://www.abisource.com/changelogs/2.6.5.phtml. Retrieved on 2008-12-19.
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: AbiWord |
- AbiSource.com, official website.
- AbiSource.com Mirror Site.
- List of AbiWord translations (both complete and incomplete)
- Andrew Leonard: Abiword Up. Salon.com, November 15, 2002. History of the project and comparison with closed source development.
- AbiWord vs. MS Word Flexbeta.net, September 1, 2004.
- Comparison between OOo Writer, AbiWord, and KWord newsforge.com, August 23, 2005.
- Abi the Ant project mascot. Page includes pronunciation explanation.
- Interview with Development team after 2.6 release
- AbiWord: A Small, Swift Word Processor
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