AbiWord - Fast, Multi-platform, Free Word Processor

Posted on May 8, 2008 at 5:12 am

Microsoft Office is a suite full of applications, of which only a few are used commonly. The most popular Microsoft Office application is Microsoft Word. However, Microsoft Word requires a more powerful computer as you move from one version to the next, making it impossible to run on low end computers.

Furthermore, the product itself is not free and can be run only in a few, proprietary operating systems. If you want a fast, free word processor that is compatible on most of operating systems out there, go try AbiWord.

AbiWord, which is one of the many applications from the AbiSource project, is a powerful word processor with lots of features suitable for work or just plain typing. While it is free, you can expect that AbiWord has all the features of a modern word processor.

If you have ever used a word processor before, you won’t face a problem in using AbiWord because the interface will be not much different from any other word processing programs.

abiword-interface-screenshot

AbiWord Features

Multiplatform - you can install AbiWord on most of operating systems out there e.g. Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MacOS X, QNX and more. Best of all, AbiWord is tailored to take advantage of functionalities of the operating system it runs on, e.g. printing capabilities, image loading.
Not bloated, can be run on low end computers - minimum requirements to launch AbiWord successfully is an IBM compatible 486-DX computer with 16 MB of RAM.
Import, export, open, save and edit other industry standards word processing formats with ease - Microsoft Word (.doc) documents, Open Office (.sxw) documents, Rich Text Format (.rtf) documents, HTML web pages and many more.

open-and-save-multi-format-documents

As with any good word processor, you can improve the looks of your AbiWord documents with layout tools such as tables, nested tables, bullets, lists, images, footnotes, end notes, styles and more.
Multiple languages support - all the common languages of the world (English, French, Spanish, etc.) and some uncommon ones.
Dictionaries and spell checking support for more than 30 languages - you can choose which dictionaries to be added to AbiWord during installation.

spell-check-and-dictionary-support

Supports text typed from left-to-right, right-to-left and mixed-mode - that means you can use AbiWord for typing texts in Arabic, Hebrew and more.
Mail Merge - use this function to automate repetitive word processing tasks such as adding multiple addresses to the same letter. By adding special fields inside AbiWord documents, you can pull meaningful data from relational databases; comma separated value (.csv) files or tabbed text files to be added automatically to the document. This can be a huge time saver, if used wisely.
Document processing capabilities via the command line - this feature can be useful if you are using AbiWord in a server environment where you have to generate form letters, print and convert documents formats.
Plugins support - you can extend the functionalities of AbiWord by installing extra plugins like document importers, thesaurus, image importers, text summarizers and more from here.
Unlimited undo and redo function.

You don’t have to worry about saving your documents with AbiWord. AbiWord saves your document with an open document format, which means that it is written in plainly readable text with XML markup, thus making it viewable by any text editor out there. This way, you don’t have to worry about other users that wanted to read your document without having AbiWord installed in their system.

It is also recommended for users that want to share their documents to save their documents in Rich Text Format, to ensure best document compatibility between multiple word processing applications. Try this feature-rich, free word processor today!

This is a guest post by Syahid A. from TechMalaya.com

Tags: word processor, free word processor, fast word processor, microsoft word alternative

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2 Responses to “AbiWord - Fast, Multi-platform, Free Word Processor”

Nirmal said on : May 10th, 2008 at 12:22 pm

I had used Abiword for 2-3 months, but then I shifted to OOO as it has more features than Abiword.

Syahid A. said on : May 10th, 2008 at 10:05 pm

@Nirmal: OO have much features but a little bit bloated compared to Abiword. It is a matter of personal preferences, imo.