So in a recent blog I brought up IBM Lotus Symphony, and during the discussion that followed a mention was made about Abiword. I have to admit, I have not looked at Abiword in a VERY LONG TIME.
I just checked out Abiword again on their website, and I have to say they have made a lot of progress. It is not a bad piece of software. And.. It’s light. Microsoft Office is a big application. OpenOffice is a big application. But Abiword is rather targeted and not all that large. At all. A quick run through a download seems to be pretty snappy.
Hmm. Not a bad choice for PCs that don’t have Microsoft Office installed at the factory..
AbiWord: A Worthy, Free Microsoft Alternative
AbiWord: A Scalpel, Not a Chain Saw
It seems the Linux and Mac OS X versions are stuck at 2.4.X, so it seems they are pretty much unmaintained (last one dates back from 2006). What a pity.
I used to use Abiword up until about 2005, when I transitioned over to Writely, which became Google Docs. It's of far greater utility to me to be able to pick up a piece of writing and continue, no matter which computer one is sitting at, and without any regard as to whether Abiword is installed or installable or not.
Who stuck with 2.4? :)
OpenSuse 11.0 - abiword-2.6.2-26.1.i586.rpm
Ubuntu 8.04LTS - abiword (2.6.3-0ubuntu2)
http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/abiword
Windows - abiword-setup-2.6.4.exe
Gnomeric is a winner (no VBA equivalent yet :( ) for spreadsheets.