AbiWord 2.2 Unleashed

uwog writes "AbiWord 2.2 marks a new milestone in the life of our beloved Ant. With a native port to MacOSX, and new features such as live updating tables of contents and TextBox support, Abi is finally a grown up Ant. Read the full announcement or go grab your own copy."

Comments

I like Abiword....

[adoarns]

if for no other reason than it doesn't take five minutes to start up.

Re:I like Abiword....

[Ann Coulter]

If it takes ten minutes to start up, it also takes five minutes to start up. Sorry to be pedantic.

Re:I like Abiword....

[n4t3]

I've been using 2.2.0 for a few weeks after receiving a link to it from the Abisource team (I reported a problem which the new version fixed) and I've been comparing it with MS Office v.X Word on my 700MHz iBook. I've had troubles with images in AbiWord. I won't go into it but suffice to say I haven't had good luck opening doc files with images. It also seems to have problems with long documents - it really bogs down compared to Word. The fonts are really nice and crisp though on my machine, nicer than my version of Word (admitedly not the latest version of Word). Abiword does still crash occassionally on my OSX10.3.6 though less than in past versions. I will continue to follow AbiWord as it clearly has promise, but its still not replacing Word for me yet.

How can it be?

[teamhasnoi]

I thought word processors had to take up 3 CDs and had to have toolbars taking up half the screen.

I don't feel comfortable with this - it must be some sort of devilish sorcery!

Mac, Linux and Windows

[Tachys]

Finally, a word processor that works on Macintosh, Windows and Linux.

No Openoffice on Xfree86 does not count

Re:Mac, Linux and Windows

[HeghmoH]

AppleWorks sucks and Office is tremendously expensive (almost 50% of the purchase price of a new eMac). OO could make a market-share killing on the Mac if they would get it ported for real.

Re:Mac, Linux and Windows

[rice_burners_suck]

No Openoffice on Xfree86 does not count

Well, how about this instead: Run OpenOffice for Windows on Wine on Xfree on Linux on VMware on FreeBSD on Bochs on Windows on VirtualPC on Mac OS X.

If you don't have a Mac, run Mac OS X in PearPC on Linux on x86.

That will make the system quick and responsive.

Re:AbiWord vs. OpenOffice?

[ClamChwdrMan]

It's pretty good. It definitely starts up faster than OpenOffice does, in both windows and linux. I would say that it doesn't always open .doc files perfectly though, especially if there is a lot of complicated things in the file. Other than that, both are great, but I tend to use OpenOffice more since I need to open .doc files all the time.

Re:localized fonts?

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

Quoting the article, which you appear not to have read:
Among the new features in AbiWord 2.2 are:

* A MacOSX port
* Tables of contents
* Document history/revisions
* Text frames
* Better support for international scripts and locales
* List folding
* Text wrapping around images
* Faster rendering
* Dashboard integration
* Visual drag and drop

This release also includes an enormous number of bug fixes and improvements across the board.

Re:Does a standalone WP have a use now?

[tessdfield]

AbiSource will integrate AbiWord with other GNOME Office apps instead of creating a new spreadsheet (Gnumeric), presentation (Criawips), or database (GNOME-DB) component.

Re:Does a standalone WP have a use now?

[poofyhairguy82]

First of all, Abiword is part of an office suite: gnome-office.

Are we going to see "AbiExcel?"

How about Gnumeric?.

But does it matter is Abiword is part of a suite? I use it on Linux because I need a good Word Processor, and Abiword takes less overhead and looks better than the OO writer. But each to his own...

"Native" Mac version

[Anonymous Coward]

While the Mac version may be native, it doesn't feel like a Mac application.

Text drag & drop isn't integrated with the rest of the system, some of the text editing commands (like alt-forward-delete) just don't work, the buttons in the save-before-closing? dialog are in the wrong order and have the wrong titles, and there is just a subtle feeling of... alienness... over the entire GUI.

People who use AbiWord on other platforms should feel right at home but most Mac users will be turned off.

Keeping up appearances

[TimmyDee]

The Mac OS X port is certainly coming along nicely. Just the fact that it uses Aqua widgets is a Good Thing, but it still has a long way to go in the picky world of Mac users. I'm not saying they haven't put any effort into it (because they certainly have -- just look at the splash screen and the disk image background along with the general Aqua appearance). It's just that a lot of Mac users are really, really, really picky when it comes to how their apps look and behave. Hell, look at Firefox. It's come a long way with the look and feel, but there are still a ton of people who complain that the web page widgets aren't OS native.

Here's what I've noticed in AbiWord 2.2 so far. The buttons look very 10.0 and there is still some issues with ghosting or artifacting (whatever you want to call it) as you move the tabs across the rulers. The save dialog boxes aren't sheets. The formatting toolbar has some issues with dual monitors (it puts the styles menu on my secondary screen when the pull-down is close to the edge of the primary). Also, the toolbars must be treated as windows themselves, because clicking on the menu bar disables many of the menu options, making me think the document window isn't completely "active". On the positive, I'm glad there are live resizing windows and a good preferences interface. It's closer, but there's still a bit of polish to put on it before Mac users accept it with open arms.

Re:Keeping up appearances

[tessdfield]

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 ;))

Re:Does a standalone WP have a use now?

[msevior]

No Need for AbiExcel. Gnumeric is the spreadsheet of gnome-office and we will continues to improve integration with it. Gnumeric now works well on Windows. Other gnome-office type apps will bubble out of the GNOME incubator into the rest of the world too.

For now Abiword copies and pastes nices with gnumeric. Select a region in gnumeric, copy, paste into word, you get a nice table containing Gnumeric's contents.

Not full embedding yet but we'll get there.

Well, it LOOKS nice.

[rueger]

Oh, I so wanted to like this. It seems simple and elegant. Sadly though a simple document, created in OpenOffice, saved as MS Word, which opens just dandy in both, is trashed horribly by AbiWord.

Simple means: 1 logo graphic, one horizontal rule, text and a bulleted list.

Beyond that, why oh why oh why does every word processor default to changing e-mail addresses to clickable links? If my document is formatted in black 12 pt Arial I do NOT want anything on my page changed into blue underlined Times New Roman.

Am I alone in believing that a document intended to be printed on paper is different from a web page?

Oh yeah - and it's slow as molasses.