AbiWord is a
free and open source softwareFree and open-source software, also F/OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS is software that is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
word processorA word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....
. 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".
AbiWord is a
free and open source softwareFree and open-source software, also F/OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS is software that is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
word processorA word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....
. 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
LinuxLinux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed,...
,
Mac OS XMac OS X is a line of computer operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc., and since 2002 has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
(
PowerPCPowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded and high-performance processors...
and Intel),
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces...
,
ReactOSReactOS is a computer operating system intended to be binary compatible with application software and device drivers made for Microsoft Windows NT versions 5.x and up...
,
BeOSBeOS was an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing...
(unsupported), Solaris,
AmigaOSAmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000...
4.0 (through its Cygnix X11 engine), and other
operating systemAn operating system is an interface between hardware and user which is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the resources of the computer that acts as a host for computing applications run on the machine. As a host, one of the purposes of an operating...
s. AbiWord is part of
GNOME OfficeGNOME Office is a free office suite for GNOME which consists of:*AbiWord word processor*Evolution groupware and e-mail application*Gnumeric spreadsheet*GNOME-DB, software that provides database connectivity....
, a collection of office applications with some degree of integration.
Features
AbiWord supports both basic word processing features such as lists, indents and character formats, and more sophisticated features including tables, styles, page headers and footers, footnotes, templates, multiple views, page columns, spell checking, and grammar checking. AbiWord includes a collaboration plugin, known as AbiCollab, that permits multiple users to work on the same document in real time, in full synchronization. The Presentation view of AbiWord, which permits easy display of presentations created in AbiWord on "screen-sized" pages, is another feature not often found in word processors.
Interface
AbiWord generally works similarly to classic versions (pre-Office 2007) of
Microsoft WordMicrosoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , Atari ST , SCO UNIX, OS/2, and Microsoft...
, as direct ease of migration was a high priority early goal. While many interface similarities remain, cloning the Word interface is not a top priority. The interface is intended to follow user interface guidelines for each respective platform.
File formats
AbiWord is packaged with several import/export filters, including
HTMLHTML, which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists etc as well as for links, quotes, and other items. It allows images...
,
Microsoft WordMicrosoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , Atari ST , SCO UNIX, OS/2, and Microsoft...
(DOC), Office Open XML (DOCX),
OpenDocumentThe OpenDocument Format is an XML-based file format for representing electronic documents such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents....
(ODT),
Rich Text FormatThe Rich Text Format is a document file format developed by Microsoft in 1987 for cross-platform document interchange...
(RTF) and
Text documentsIn computing, plain text is a term used for an ordinary "unformatted" sequential file readable as textual material without much processing.The encoding has traditionally been either ASCII, one of its many derivatives such as ISO/IEC 646 etc., or sometimes EBCDIC...
(TXT).
LaTeXLaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as ....
is supported for export only. Plug-in filters are available to deal with many other formats, notably
WordPerfectWordPerfect is a proprietary word processing application, now owned by Corel. Bruce Bastian, a Brigham Young University graduate student, and BYU computer science professor Dr. Alan Ashton joined forces to design a word processing system for the city of Orem's Data General Corp. minicomputer...
documents. The native
file formatA file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...
, .abw, uses
XMLXML is a set of rules for encoding documents electronically. It is defined in the produced by the W3C and several other related specifications; all are fee-free open standards....
, so as to mitigate
vendor lock-inIn economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in, or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products and services, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs...
concerns with respect to interoperability and also digital archiving.
Grammar Check
The AbiWord project includes a grammar checking plugin using
Link GrammarLink grammar is a theory of syntax by Davy Temperley and Daniel Sleator which builds relations between pairs of words, rather than constructing constituents in a tree-like hierarchy. There are two basic parameters: directionality and distance...
. AbiWord had grammar checking before any other open source word processor, although a grammar checking was later added to
OpenOffice.orgOpenOffice.org , commonly known as OpenOffice, is an office application suite available for a number of different computer operating systems. It is distributed as free software and written using its own GUI toolkit...
. Link Grammar is both a theory of syntax and an open source parser which is now developed by the AbiWord project.
Version differences
AbiWord 2.6.x does not support Windows 9x. Users of these systems may still use AbiWord 2.4.6.
See also
- List of word processors
- Comparison of word processors
-General information:This table provides general information about selected word processors.-Characteristics:This table gives characteristics of each word processor.-Operating System Compatibility:...
- Office Open XML software
This is an overview of software support for the Office Open XML format, an open document file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents.The list here is not exhaustive...
- OpenDocument software
This is an overview of software support for the OpenDocument format, an open document file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents.The list here is not exhaustive...
External links
- AbiSource.com, official website.
- 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