Slashdot Mirror
AbiWord vs. MS Word, For Now
Gsurface writes "If you have decided that it is time to kill MS Word, then it is time to look for an alternative. Flexbeta.net compares AbiWord, part of a larger project known as AbiSource, with MS Word and asks: is AbiWord a worthy MS Word replacement? Not to ruin the ending but according to the article the only draw back to AbiWord is that it currently does not feature a grammar checker, though a plug-in is in the works." (Also on this front, AbiWord's native Mac OS X version is labeled experimental, but seems to work very nicely.)
...but why am I supposed to hate Word? Seems a decent product and the sharepoint shared workspaces has turned out to be real popular with my users.
If you already have Word/Office, then you shouldn't hate it. However, if you don't have it and can't afford it, then you may need an alternative. I personally can't afford MSOffice, so I go with OOo.
It's also $200 or so (unless you get it with a new computer).
I'd call randomly corupting files and moving images around more than annoying quirks. The fact is, Word's only killer feature is 100% Word compatibility. Combine that with a monopoly, saturation advertising and restrictive licensing deals with OEMs and you have a WP that's hard to beat.
I'm sorry, but word just does NOT have 100% word compatibility. Give me ANY two versions of word, and I can generage a doc on one version that doesn't load properly on the other version.
What a bizarre way to do it - why would the user ever want to *not* repair the file when they try to open it?
Simple filters should be as easy as a XML transform.
This is a popular fallacy. But XML only says how the data is stored - it says absolutely nothing about what data is stored.
Consider how you might store a table layout in XML. There are literally thousands of ways you might go about it. The chances of you and someone else even choosing to store the same bits of information, let alone with a similar structure, are, frankly, pretty slim. So, no, it's not "easy as an XML transform". The only advantage of XML is that it makes it easier to read the data -- but the tricky part is interpreting it, and XML does nothing to help there.
Word's only killer feature is 100% Word compatibility.
.DOC file format... It would allow that small office with 3 employees to continue to happily use their Office 95 CD's they got back in 1995 and work perfectly fine for them.
which it DOES NOT HAVE.
Word 2003 is not 100% compatable with Word 97. word 2000 had trouble with word95 AND word97 files.
there are HUGE compatability problems between versions of Word that make the switch to Open Office look like tiny annoyances.
Microsoft intentionally does not want 100% compatability with previous version of the
Microsoft does not like nor want that.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.