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Yes and no. I got a little excited about the OASIS format a few months ago, and I love Abiword, so I picked through the archives fairly thoroughly.

As I read more I began to agree with them. One of the main concerns is compatibility. At this point in time, that means compatibility with Word. RTF is much better suited for that. The RTF spec is available, and RTF is fairly well supported in most programs (WordPerfect, OpenOffice.org, Ted, etc.) so it is the better choice to focus on for compatibility right now.

That said, they would love to have good support for OASIS. The current OpenOffice.org import/export plugin needs a lot of love. It was written several years ago and never worked really spectacularly. If anyone is willing to hack on it (or rewrite it) and help make it better we would be ecstatic. Really. Send a message to the developers list and they'll point you in the right direction (probably to the OpenOffice Writer Filter plugin in CVS). Add constructive comments or patches to the bug report. Stop by on IRC (#abiword on irc.gnome.org) and ask for pointers where to get started.

Alternatively, if anyone is willing to sponsor (pay) one of the developers to implement this feature they would be more than willing to do so. Offer up a bounty or something like that. I've thought about chipping in (financially) on such an effort.

Abiword can support OASIS. This would help make it a true standard and a viable alternative to RTF and DOC files. But they do need some help to do so.

A short googling doesn't give many results with abiword related to oasis.

It seems not even in February 2005 to have been worth a discussion:
http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-user /2005/Feb/0002.html

If there are computer resource (memory, space, etc.) problems with OpenOffice, there are always a few free alternatives, although there might be some legal issues with the free version of the 602 PC Suite.

It's a bit late for THIS purchasing cycle, but you'll need to ante up to Redmond again in another 1-3 years, right?

It's time to PILOT alternatives, such as OpenOffice and AbiWord NOW. You might even be able to do this "skunkworks" without involving IT, at least not initually: Give OO or Abiword to students to take home and teach them how to save in MS-Word format. Give them the official MS-Office reader-programs so they can verify it will look OK when the teacher reads it using MS-Office. Teachers who have "install privilages" on their classroom computers can install it themselves.

By this time next year, or whenever MS wants more money, you'll be in a much better position to lobby for a cheaper alternative.

Well, if you're asking the question seriously, I think it's important to point out that an installable AbiWord binary is available for Windows; a word processor is, after all, the most important part of an "office suite," for most users. A testing build of Gnumeric is also available. I personally don't give a damn if OO.o relies on Java since most of my writing these days is in TeX, but if it's something that concerns you, there are options.

Yes, I'm sure I've seen ArchLinux's logo somewhere else before...

I think you have a legitimate point. For example, let's look at AbiWord. AbiWord 1.0 was pretty good. However, once AbiWord 2.0 came out, the Abi project basically buried AbiWord 1.0. One has to really dig around Abi's site to find AbiWord 1.0. AbiWord 1.0 won't even compile on Fedora Core Three without serious hacking, and won't run once compiled. AbiWord 1.0 was only supported by the Abi project for about one year.

Anyone remember the problem with KMail 1.0, where it would stop working in late 2001? When this problem was brought to the KDE project's attention, their response was "You must upgrade to KDE 2.0 to fix this bug". KDE 1.0 was released in the summer of 1998; the bug popped up three years later.

So yes, certain projects are very flakey about supporting earlier releases of their software.

In terms of the Linux kernel, the last 2.0.x release was released about a year ago--some eight years after the first 2.0.x release. This is a longer support period than Microsoft's. The 2.2.x kernel also had its last release early last year, making this a kernel that was supported for five years.

Of course, in all cases, the source code is freely available and can be patched by anyone that wishes to do so. Unfortunatly, it can be very difficult to patch someone else's source code--a lot of source code is hard to read and patches which appear to fix things may introduce issues that only the original developer could foresee.

OpenOffice 2.0 beta (and every single other version of OpenOffice I have used) has a nasty show stopper bug in it.

The bug is this: If I want to make a document use any font besides their (IMHO, ugly) default "Nimbus Roman No9 L" font, the font will revert back to the Nimbus roman font if I hit the right arrow at the end of the document. Because of how I write, I frequently do this, resulting in what I type being in the wrong font.

I can't find any way to work around this issue (besides having to constantly look at what I am typing and changing the font when this bug pops up).

AbiWord (both 2.0 and 2.2) have a serious issue with being very slow. In particular, when I hit the up and down arrows at the ends of the vertical scrollbar, AbiWord freezes for one or two seconds while slowly scrolling. AbiWord also does this when I need to change pages while typing. AbiWord 1.0, which didn't have this problem doesn't compile without great effort (thanks, GCC developers, for breaking code that compiled just fine only three years ago), and doesn't run when compiled.

SIAG is very unstable and frequently crashes on me (using both the Xaw and the Xaw32 toolkits.).

I finally settled on Ted, an excellent light word processor which compiles and runs fine. Naturally, this word processor is also not bug free on my system; it has a problem with finding font, requiring some serious hacking in the file appFont.c before I could use this program to write a paper.

I am using Fedora Core Three and wasn't able to find a word processor without serious bugs in it. I finally had to do some source code hacking to get a word processor that I could use.

Abiword seems to be undergoing very active development on OSX. See http://www.abisource.com/%7Efjf/

As a scientist, where I do most of my work in MS Office...I basically have to use MS Office because I need to interoperate with my peers and coworkers.

Furthermore, Excel (every scientists best friend), is still far and away the best spreadsheet application and to me is Window's so called "killer app".

I will definitely miss that loading time (of approx. 2 minutes) of Acrobat Reater and that invaluable information on those 4573 (or something) patents that they have for one document reader software!

Use Ghostscript then. The GSview graphical interface is available for Windows, OS/2 and Linux (though I personally prefer gv there). It supports PDF and Postscript formats (PS, EPS, etc.), and can display, print and easily convert between them, and even convert them to raster formats, so it is actually much more useful than Acrobat Reader, while being much less bloated at the same time. Ghostscript and GSview are always present on my CDs with useful Windows software, along with OpenOffice.org (which can save as PDF, nota bene), AbiWord, Firefox, ClamWin and PuTTY, to name just a few. If you work with serious printing, Ghostscript is a must.

http://www.abisource.com/

I could never get OO to work on OS X, though I use it on my Windows Machine.

2. Event handling, fonts, and printing will take up most of your time Most of the postings that I have seen about Aquafication refer seem to focus solely on getting Aqua widgets on the screen. In other words, everyone gravitates to the "sexy" engineering work. Surprisingly, this is not the hard engineering work. The really hard engineering work is getting all the tedious details of event handling, font layout and rendering, and printing implemented correct. Essentially, VCL is a full-featured cross-platform GUI framework (similar to QT, Java AWT, etc.) so you need to reimplement almost all of that framework before OOo becomes even reasonably stable. When I first NeoOffice/J, getting native windows, buttons, lines, etc. to draw on the screen was finished rather quickly. But implementation slowed to a crawl when I implemented event handling and font rendering. Why? Because the native event handling and font rendering behavior is wildly different on Mac OS X than it is on X11 but your VCL framework implementation must ensure that this different behavior is properly mapped to VCL's platform independent behavior.

I looked at OOo with the thought of helping out with the native port, but recoiled when I actually looked at ths sheer size and complexity and skill necessary. Another important point in the linked post is that moving to Aqua will take "a couple thousand hours of developer time," which I actually think is being optimistic. Unless an experienced somebody or, more likely, team of sombodies is willing to put their nose to the project 40 hours a week, like it's a full time job, it's not going to happen. And even if it does happen, it will break compatibility with the rest of OOo.

OOo, I'm sorry to see you go. At this point it might be easier to start from AbiWord and move out to develop a full office suite on the Mac. The tension between being "Mac-like" and coordination with the rest of OOo -- which isn't anywhere near as mature as MSO, yet, anyway -- is too great.

This makes AbiWord's introduction of a Cocoa port even more newsworthy, in my opinion. Yes, I know it's not as robust an offering (I'm not sure how it could be with drastically different methods of development), but being able to read documents across the three major platforms in the same native format is a huge plus for me. YMMV, though.

OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 is for Mac OS X (X11)
http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/ooo-osx_download s.html

OO is for X-11...no-one I know has been able to install it properly due to dependency hell

don't bother with OO -- use NeoOffice instead (office suite)
http://www.neooffice.org/

or AbiWord (word processing only)
http://www.abisource.com/

or spend $60 and get
Nisus (word processing only)
http://www.nisus.com/

I have all three and like each for different reasons but tend to use NeoOffice and Nisus the most...

Here's my list of spyware/adware free apps, in no particular order:

Crap Cleaner - Cleans temp files, cookies, etc
P2P + Codec Packs - Kazaa Lite Resurrection, K-Lite Codec Packs, QuickTime Alternative, Real Alternative
Gmail Notifier - System tray icon that checks your google mail
Winamp - Media Player
Open Office - Office Suite
AbiWord - Word Processing
GIMP - Image Editor
Paint.Net - Image Editor
AVG Antivirus - Decent free antivirus
Everest Home - System diagnostics and benchmarking solution
Daemon Tools - CD/DVD emulator
Zone Alarm - The free version is a decent firewall
CWShredder - Removes CoolWeb adware

I used Linux for a long time, and currently have to use Windows at work.

I finally got the PC gaming monkey off my back a few years ago, and bought a Powerbook - since then I bought a G5.

For what you are talking about, tired of tweaking stuff and want something that works a little more straightforwardly, OS X is fantastic.

I don't know if you've ever used Cygwin on Windows, but OS X is nothing like that - because it's really UNIX through and through. It's just not X-Windows (though that is an option, as you can install an X-server for free). The Terminal is a real first-class citizen in this OS, you can interact with running programs, drag stuff back and forth from the Finder, and generally have a shell that feels like it belongs with the OS even more than XTerm (and far more than a Cygwin shell).

It also comes with many common things you use, like Apache and SSH and CUPS and so on. Even better is that means these are kept up to date for you! I used to use debian and run regular updates against a security patching site, but here it's done for you very nicely, and in a reasonable timeframe (usually not quite as fast as the patches are ready, but still pretty fast).

If you want OpenOffice try NeoOfficeJ, which I use (even though I also bought Office). By default the menus will be fixed in the window (not the Mac Way) but you can get a patch to fix that. NeoOfficeJ requires no X server.

Also there is possibly the option of Abiword, which I think can also read/write Word documents. Or, possibly you can use TextEdit (built in) to read and write simple Word documents - the next version (Panther) will support tables which is really the only reason I do not use it myself for most WYSIWYG text editing.

I also love the dock. Some people don't seem to like it, and if you have problems with it there are many extensions you can use to work in other ways... but I greatly prefer the dynamic nature of the dock (it holds the things I am interested in running that day, like a palette of applications for the work at hand).

It's also very refined, there are just a lot of little touches that make it very easy to use in day-to-day operations.

I would go for it. Even if the experiment fails, an iBook has a pretty high resale value!

1. OpenOffice.org pride themselves on having such an open file format that anyone can use, but tell me:

   Are there actually any programs other than OpenOffice.org that can read/write in OOo formats?

Right now? Yes. Others are in the works.

I wonder how feasible it would be for other word processors, such as AbiWord, to use this format natively

AbiWord already is in Yiddish, apparently.

I cannot empahsize enough how important it is that you provide feedback and submit bug report. FJF, the maintainer of Abiword for the Mac has already asked for as much help as possible to make Abiword a properly intergrated Mac application so get involved and please help out in any way you can.

last time I checked (1.7 version)

The abiword developers desperately need the help from users of non-English and non-Latin alphabets as it is extremely hard for them or any one who doesn't know the languages to figure out if Hebrew, or Arabic or Asian scripts are displaying correctly.

Please do get involved, you do not need to be a programmer, all that you need is to be willing to be patient and be able to explain in great detail what is not working correctly and how it should look.

Thanks for using Abiword.

Sincerely

Abi-nonymous

Unfortunately, 2.2 doesn't have such a feature, however it has been requested ( Bug 7342).

Thanks for the pointer! I just added this bug some votes.

Unfortunately, 2.2 doesn't have such a feature, however it has been requested (Bug 7342). Also, .doc exporting is exactly as you've described, .rtf with a .doc extension.

As far as I know, you're the first person to report this. Would you mind filing a report in bugzilla and maybe attaching some screenshots? It would aid development, especially if you could help debug the problem (mainly by commenting on/answering followup questions in bugzilla). Thanks.

Are you printing from the command line? (this sounds like Bug 7363, by the way)

That request is in bugzilla, but you can still accomplish that functionality with continuous sections breaks before and after the text in columns.

Known bug being actively worked on: Bug 7078

I downloaded the Mac version and set "Application-level" text direction to Right to Left so I can write documents in Arabic.

I followed the steps in this document, but alas, no luck. Arabic text input works, and the text is aligned right, but the input direction is still left to right and the result is not satisfactory. Anyone else tried doing this and succeeded?

The longer these issues are kept out of Bugzilla, the longer they persist (yes, that's a request for you to add them to Bugzilla ;))

Working LiNK for the lazy: http://www.abisource.com/screenshots/AbiWord-2.0-G nome.png

Abiword neither sucks nor blows.

Abiword R0X0RZ.

AbiWord Word Processor and Gnumeric Spreadsheet. Fast, functional, non-bloated. (Disclosure: I help out with these projects but have used the competition.)

Don't know about live CDs, maybe the folks at yellow dog have cooked one up, or LinuxPPC, but I can help you with making OS X look and feel a bit more like your linux stuff.

I can't find anything on getting auto raise windows. However, there are plenty of virtual desktop items, there are a couple here

You should also be able to install and run KDE and verious other window environments, here's some some information You can google for more. The downside to this is that while under KDE or other environments, you won't be able to run Aqua applications.

OpenOffice is availible for OS X in Fink (which I highly recomend you consider installing and using) and as NeoOfficeJ.

AbiWord is availible as either an X11 app or as a beta native app

The GIMP is availible as an X11 app via fink, but if you don't do a lot of heavy work, can I suggest looking into an application called PhotoLine

XMMS, well there's iTunes and various other players, unless XMMS does something in particular you need.

mplayer and vlc are both availible for OS X as native apps as is firefox.

As for GAIM, I hear a lot of recomendations for Adium.

I indeed wrote such as Abiword (with a link which should have been toward this site).
I used Abiword under both BeOS and OSX where these fit nicely.
Anyway I do not use it intensively as I now work using the Latex port for OSX link, link and link...

Hate to reply to my own comment but...

Shame on me for not doublechecking that the address you supplied was correct

what other good, solid business apps are available for Linux?

Abiword, Gnumeric, and Evolution are also cited a lot, these are GNOME packages. Then there is KOffice, part of KDE, which few seem to use or talk about, but which does seem solid and extensive.

50%? Are you kidding? It's rare to see a Windows computer with less than 100% pure, unadulterated, stolen shit in it

That certainly rings true among the people I know - at least with regards to their home computers. 100% of them run pirated copies of WinXP, pirated photoshop, pirated Office, etc...

Personally I think the likes of Abiword make a perfectly acceptable replacement for Word, at least for home users - and often times businesses would do just fine with it. I think Abiword is an upgrade from MS Word - others my not agree. But it's definitely faster to load, looks just as good (better in my opinion), uses less memory, and has more than enough features to keep home users, college students, and business people happy.

I'm not a huge fan of Open Office - not because there's anything wrong with it. It's just that I don't really need an Office Suite. (I imagine most home users don't.) But for those who do "need" it, I think it's a great substitute for the $300+ MS Office Suite.

For my own spreadsheet needs, I prefer Gnumeric because it feels very light weight while still having all the features I need. Plus I think it looks great and it's a heck of a lot faster to load up than OOo. The only problem with Gnumeric is that there isn't a Windows port (that I know of).

I also have several friends who pirate the "Pro" version of Trillian. I finally convinced my friend to give the Windows Port of gaim a try and he has been using it ever since. Bonus - download the encryption plugin for gaim and have secure messaging.

I don't know enough about Photoshop and image editing to know if The Gimp is an acceptable replacement. I've read several posts where people say it is *not* (an acceptable replacement.) I'll have to take their word for it. My image editing needs are very basic so gThumb is about all I really need.

I have another friend who pirates FTP software. With the existence of FileZilla, I fail to see the point. What can't FileZilla do?

A lot of people pirate WinZip. I have to admit that WinZip does have a pretty interface (if you use Windows), but if you don't want to pay for it, and you don't want to take the risk of infecting your Windows computer with a virus when you download a WinZip crack of Kazaa, then I recommend 7-zip as a free alternative. Also, the last time I saw WinZip (which admittedly was years ago) there were a few archive types it didn't handle.

There are so many great Free and Open Source alternatives available, even if you use Windows.

Get FireFox now

For example: "This Program Lets You Write Letters".

:-)

Because the major distros come with different:
* versions of X Windows
* versions of GNOME or KDE
* versions of glibc
* versions of the ABI
* package management systems

When you are distributing your software in source code form for developers to compile themselves, it's no big deal. When you are trying to release a binary that works in a supported way, it's a hassle.

This hassle isn't limited to closed source software. For example, look how many download options Abiword has. Regardless of what "should" work, there's been enough hassles in the past that most folks want binaries tailored to their specific platform.

Rob

Link to OS X version...

Like it or not, submitting Word format electronically is now required in many situations for filling out applications, forms, etc. Any other word processor that cannot read AND write Word format is never going to gain market share. And only being able to write "Hello world" in Word is not enough.

For example, I tried to use Abiword to write a two-page grant proposal that had to be submitted electronically in Word format. I had to include some simple graphics (two data plots). I wrote something and sent it out. Fortunately it got checked by someone else before going to the sponsor- in Word it had the wrong number of pages, really screwed up formatting, etc. I had to find a Windows computer and use Word to fix everything.

Abiword doesn't even have text boxes or math equation editors yet.

No text boxes? That's odd, considering there are at least 7 textbox bugs fixed in 2.1.6.

As for math equation editors, the functionality does not exist yet. However, work has been ongoing to integrate gtkmathview with Abi since Guadec 2004. Look for it in Abi 2.3 or 2.4.

The download is 5MB. 5MB!!! This is what I want in a document editor.

Or better yet AbiWord, it's cross platform too! :-) Yes there are alternatives to OpenOffice.org as well as to MS Office.

I think I see the flaw in your logic. It starts to go wrong where you have the thought "open Openoffice.org". Step away from the dark side and try abiword and gnumeric instead. Trust me, you won't regret it.

However, the OSS End User Apps like AbiWord (that are not corporate backed) are perpetually trying to catch up with the proprietary vendors.

Yes, I could probably make a pretty good living patching and enhancing open source projects for indivdual companies... Compiere (as one example) has a lot of room for such improvements, but that's not the point. It's not about making a living, it's about launching a successful project. I am certainly not saying that the proliferation of OSS developers alone will stop me. It's that the threat of OSS developers reworking my idea into a free application is equally as high as the threat of Microsoft reworking the idea, and making it a core part of the next Windows.

The two; "big proprietary" vs. "small but numerous OSS" balance eachother out. Between these two major market forces, there's little room left for the "small but still propietary".

Again, I don't see this as a complaint as much as a simple statement of fact.

Two words: Abi Word (link provided)

• AbiWord; appears to require X11, although the pages aren't clear from a skim.
• ThinkFree Office; java based. I think it might be ok, but only you know if it has the sophistication of features that you need.
  
  FWIW, a place to look for this sort of stuff is the Apple Products Guide as they'll list pretty much anything that works on the Mac. That means a lot of crap in the hits, but it's better than doing a "macintosh word processor" in Google. Usually.

Gnumeric 1.4 with Windows support is just around the corner. Abiword List post by Jody