I rarely use a word processor: if I can’t write plain text in a text editor (strangely optimized for editing text), something’s gone weird in my world.
I can’t always avoid word processors, however. Occasionally I really need to read (or even edit) text saved from a word processor in something other than plain text. Usually my first task is to extract the relevant text from that format into something I might actually want to use.
AbiWord is my underappreciated aid. Not only is it quick and fast (especially in startup time), but it has one stunningly useful command line option: --to=format. That’s right. From the command line, you can convert a document in whatever evil, proprietary format AbiWord supports into something useful, without splash screens or menu popups or even taking your hand off of the keyboard to move a mouse.
As a word processor, it’s fairly nice too–doing exactly what I need to do on those rare occasions when I really really need a word processor.
Thanks to the AbiWord developers and everyone who’s contributed to the project!
enough with the "thank you" posts
@George,
I'll vote against your vote against. I quite enjoy the "thank you" posts. It's always interesting to read little tidbits of what people use and see if I can benefit from the same. I say "keep 'em coming", c!
And here I just finished setting up OOo as a server process to accept connections through a jarfile to convert types, when all I had to do was use abiword --to=type. Damn. Well, thanks for the tip!
this is very interesting, I'll keep it in mind.
I agree with Jeremy. Keep the "thank you" posts coming. I find them interesting and helpful.
AbiWord is one of my favorites too. It has most of the features I need in a word processor, and as you say, it loads very quickly. It's been around for quite a while and has a good development team behind it.