Abiword & Open Office......

[crazymogg]

Does anybody here actually use Abiword as a daily word-processor ? I've
tried to download it, but it seems very limited in its basic state. It
cannot import bitmaps, or MS word documents without a variety of plugins.
I've tried to download some of the plugins, but the download page is
virtually impossible to understand without some basic programming knowledge
& skills. Why has it been so highly recommended, when the plugin download
pages are so complex to understand.

I use Open Office all the time now, even though I've no formal Office Suite
training. It's quite user friendly and seems relatively complete for any
use, even if slower to load. Why does'nt Abiword come bundled with some of
the same choices as Open Office Text is, so that one can select the options
one needs.

I do a lot of work (unpaid) from Home within the voluntary sector, and would
appreciate a simple quick loading word-processor, that shows the pages in
WYSIWYG page format...I'm currently using a combination of Open Office, &
Text Shield for simpler quicker tasks. Some documents I have to edit are
sent to me in MS Word format, so I need open Office as well.

Any technical help to understand Abiword download Plugins would be
appreciated, as it does seem the ideal programme for doing everything within
the one programme , and quicker too.

Thanks......John

 

[Steve King]

Does anybody here actually use Abiword as a daily word-processor ? I've
tried to download it, but it seems very limited in its basic state. It
cannot import bitmaps, or MS word documents without a variety of plugins.
I've tried to download some of the plugins, but the download page is
virtually impossible to understand without some basic programming knowledge
& skills. Why has it been so highly recommended, when the plugin download
pages are so complex to understand.

I use Open Office all the time now, even though I've no formal Office Suite
training. It's quite user friendly and seems relatively complete for any
use, even if slower to load. Why does'nt Abiword come bundled with some of
the same choices as Open Office Text is, so that one can select the options
one needs.

I do a lot of work (unpaid) from Home within the voluntary sector, and would
appreciate a simple quick loading word-processor, that shows the pages in
WYSIWYG page format...I'm currently using a combination of Open Office, &
Text Shield for simpler quicker tasks. Some documents I have to edit are
sent to me in MS Word format, so I need open Office as well.

Any technical help to understand Abiword download Plugins would be
appreciated, as it does seem the ideal programme for doing everything within
the one programme , and quicker too.

Thanks......John

John,

I much prefer the Atlantis word processors, http://www.rssol.com/en, to
Abiword. I think they're more stable, more powerful, and handle Word's
..doc format better. I usually use the Open Office word processor for
large tasks. But it loads so slowly on our 3-year old machine, that I
just use Atlantis Nova for quick changes. The company offers a free
version, Nova, and a more powerful shareware version, Ocean Mind.

Steve . . .

 

[crazymogg]

Steve !
Thanks I've just downloaded Atlantis Nova, and it's easily the simplest and
most versatile WP programme I've yet seen. Very user friendly for the
relative non.techies like myself..many Thanks......John

 

[MachineMessiah]

Abiword

OpenSource stuff tends to be like this, they assume you know what your're
doing. If you're using Windoze you should d/l the zips.
I like Abiword. Open Office is too big for my needs.

 

[Hubert Figuiere]

Does anybody here actually use Abiword as a daily word-processor ?

I do, but I'm biased.

I've
tried to download it, but it seems very limited in its basic state. It
cannot import bitmaps, or MS word documents without a variety of plugins.

Yes, you need to get plugins to. This is IMHO a mistake, and I'll try
to push the idea to add most of important plugins into the main
distribution, at least on Windows.
And I now find that we don't have a package for 1.99.x version (ie
almost final 2.0) for Windows.

I've tried to download some of the plugins, but the download page is
virtually impossible to understand without some basic programming knowledge
& skills. Why has it been so highly recommended, when the plugin download
pages are so complex to understand.

Yeah, this is something that should be redone too. I apologize for that.

I use Open Office all the time now, even though I've no formal Office Suite
training. It's quite user friendly and seems relatively complete for any
use, even if slower to load. Why does'nt Abiword come bundled with some of
the same choices as Open Office Text is, so that one can select the options
one needs.

One of the reason is that AbiWord project is not run by people paid to
do that. Just by a bunch of volunteer. We don't have the same
financial mean as OpenOffice team has.

[...]

Any technical help to understand Abiword download Plugins would be
appreciated, as it does seem the ideal programme for doing everything within
the one programme , and quicker too.

2.0.x for Windows will soon be released. (2.0 was skipped on Windows due to some
serious problems with the Windows version). I'll make sure that
plugins get released as well, and that better download directions be
written for users' guidance.

Hub

 

[Portia]

I do, except when I am at my job . I only use OpenOffice/LaTex
when I need math notation.

I think it is only natural that abiword crashes when dealing with some
..doc documents, when you consider that Microsoft Office can and
does corrupt its own formats. Yesterday, at my office, I wrote a fairly
complex table in Word 2000. Then, I sent it to a colleague who uses Word
Xp and the program somehow corrupted the document while importing it and
the document become unusable.

In my experience at least Abiword has never corrupted anything. I try not
to use doc. formats, though.

 

[Hubert Figuiere]

I think it is only natural that abiword crashes when dealing with some
.doc documents,

It should not crash. We are willing to fix this kind of problems.
You can report the bug at
http://bugzilla.abisource.com/
if you attach the document to the bug...

Hub

 

[Arnie]

I like AbiWord, and have used it when I used to have a proper working
version.
Now, 1.99.6 crashes a lot. I'll just wait until v2 is out.
By the way, Atlantis Nova is a nice one too.
Too bad it doesn't support tables yet.
I think Atlantis can be compared to (a somewhat enhached) WordPad.

 

[Hubert Figuiere]

I like AbiWord, and have used it when I used to have a proper working
version.
Now, 1.99.6 crashes a lot. I'll just wait until v2 is out.

Version 2.0 is out for UNIX.
Version 2.0.1 will be out soon and will bring back Windows and QNX
support (Windows version had big problem, that is why we skipped 2.0
for Windows, until they got fixed).
Soon == 1~2 weeks.


Hub