AbiWord Community Outreach Project

Just seen on Flickr - AbiWord running on a device based on OpenEmbedded. It seems that AbiWord’s size and efficiency are really strong points that others have discovered as well.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/koenkooi/403544298/in/photostream/
(Yes, I’ll work on getting the build working again - I’m not sure what the deal is but rest assured it will be fixed soon.)

and I chime in, thanks to Technorati..

http://pandionknight.wordpress.com/2007/01/17/open-document-format/

“Mad Props” (and by that I mean unconditional love and support) for Marc “Uwog” Maurer for maintaining our exciting up-to-date version in the Fedora Extras repository in this post… Some congrats as well on the slick speed and the RSVG import plugin. http://www.thecodergeek.com/blog/2006/09/11/i-should-have-done-this-long-ago/ GNOME Office is a pretty slick suite! Oh, and the Portable AbiWord edition also gets some love as well.

[EDIT: Link is now restored, thanks Peter for re-writing that article!]

AbiWord saves the day for this blogger! I think it’s probably a consensus among the developers that our import/export support is one of our prouder accomplishments to date, and that includes making things work even when the input (such as in this case) is not necessarily entirely sane. This post by one of the libwpd developers (libwpd is the library used by AbiWord to help import WordPerfect documents) is another sign in this direction: Depending on your version of libwpd (2.4.6 for Windows will have it for sure at least), you may have better WordPerfect file loading support than WordPerfect itself!

I think that’s pretty spiffy!

Yes, it’s true - Pango rendering in CVS HEAD is coming along to the point where we’ve gotten some positive feedback on its functioning, as well as a reference to some areas for improvement. Hopefully we can get some additional details on those issues so 2.6 has the best complex script support of the open-source word processors! http://vee-r.blogspot.com/2006/09/abiword-thai-text.html

Yep, some clever folks have worked out how to get the nicely-portable (in several ways!) AbiWord running on the GP2X handheld device! The blog entry is here.

Way to go, creative computer folks of the world!

What sphere? Oh, just the blogo-sphere!

• http://markgrif.wordpress.com/2006/08/14/word-processor/ - A Mac user runs into our rendering bug. It’s a shame I have a pseudo-stock answer to blogs/messages about that that in my head… hopefully Hub can get some free time to dedicate to Abi and to fix it up for our Mac users (who rank second in direct downloads from AbiSource behind Windows, unknown ranking if linux distribution use is counted.).
• http://wayofthegeek.org/linux/2006/08/thousand-miles-day-three-settling-in.html - A switcher to Linux reports this on Day 3: “AbiWord is awesome. A wonderful light- to middleweight text editor.” (and more). I wonder how this user would feel if they knew that AbiWord also ran on Windows and Mac, and that import support has actually improved again in the unreleased version (since 2.4.6 will have LibWPD 0.8.6, the Bullet- and Sum1-proof version, at least on Windows). Rock on!
• http://www.thebambers.me.uk/wordpress/?p=207 - We got this user by the virtue of being a part of the Xubuntu default install. Xubuntu, for the uninitiated, is an Ubuntu distribution (official like Kubuntu) that uses XFCE and GTK+ as the desktop environment. AbiWord and Gnumeric replace OO.o in this distribution, targeted for lighter-weight systems with lower memory and processing capabilities. Another satisfied user!
• http://www.cyncsm.com/2006/08/15/open-source-and-the-mac/ - There are certainly quite a fair share of Mac OS X users of Abi in this sphere o’ blogs - here’s another recommendation for an MS Word replacement and OO.o “for those who just need a word processor”. There’s your UNIX Philosophy - do one thing and do it well.
• http://dueyfinster.blogspot.com/2006/12/nokia-770-internet-tablet.html - A platform we don’t often see in the Abi-related blog posts, but certainly an apt (yes, Debian geeks may chuckle) one, here’s a happy new Nokia 770 Internet Tablet user calling AbiWord a “must have” on the device. Mad props to Nokia (Dan dAndrada) for the start of that port and the OpenDocument import/export!
• http://disedlibrarian.edublogs.org/2006/04/07/portable-apps-suite/ - More promotion as part of the Portable Apps suite, I wonder if it’s been updated to the 2.4.5 version yet? I should remind this blogger that AbiWord also runs on Mac with the same file formats, that’s not just OO.o’s domain!

More quickies, in multimedia form this time. Enjoy!

• I have a hard time telling from this post whether or not this person knows that AbiWord runs on Windows, too… (and Mac OS X for that matter) http://www.malcolmr.com/?p=22
• This podcast take a while to get going (AbiWord segment starts 23:12 into it), but it does have some nice praise for AbiWord. http://www.linuxreality.com/podcast/episode-23-productivity-applications/ (from http://newsvac.newsforge.com/newsvac/06/07/19/1441253.shtml - I think I had to follow 3 links to find the original podcast the first time I ran across this…)
• This is our second mention on this blog - sounds like we have a happy user! I’m curious what makes TextEdit fit the same niche as AbiWord on Mac for this user, though… Glad all the Cocoa integration work was worthwhile, however! http://www.ruralsme.com/blog/2006/07/18/foss-for-macs/
• A compilation CD of free (but not necessarily Free as in speech) software, all in Spanish and/or Catala. I wonder why there is a separate 2.4.3 Catala version of AbiWord, in addition to 2.4.5 here - was some translation not sent upstream to us? http://www.cdlibre.org/consultar/catalogo/Ofimatica_Procesadores-de-texto.html (found through http://www.hispanew.org/html/?p=216 )
• I don’t understand anyone who would pirate MS Word, really, I don’t anymore. AbiWord is just that spiffy, and this blogger shares my (mildly biased) viewpoint. http://free-softwares-links.blogspot.com/2006/07/free-softwares.html
• Bloated is such an ugly word. I’m glad this person doesn’t think AbiWord is bloated. http://pauljcg.blogspot.com/2006/07/are-we-finally-seeing-shift-to-open.html
• AbiWord mentioned on a Myspace blog, now that’s kinda neat in a mass-marketing sort of way. I should make a profile for Abi the Ant. http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=92068870&blogID=147270585
• I think this is Portuguese - cute icon! This person likes the small size of the download. http://ideiasaovento.wordpress.com/2006/07/21/processador-de-texto-gratis/
• AbiWord and Gnumeric make a great office team - this user thinks that somebody should step up and make a PowerPoint replacement… I think it must be only us AbiWord geeks that make presentations in AbiWord… http://supermikenews.blogspot.com/2006/07/experiments-with-ubuntu-linux-adoption.html
• This person made the astute observations that first impressions can be deceiving. AbiWord doesn’t need to look complicated to be able to have complex abilities - usability is a big thing for us. http://www.lifewithubuntu.com/2006/07/openoffice-alternatives/ (Bonus - nice screenshot!)
• We got named “download of the day” here and they felt particularily happy about our slim size and low hardware demands. Not sure what the official word is, but I’ve certainly run (at least older) versions of AbiWord on less than 64 mb ram, though that’s probably a good amount to have as a minimum… http://www.byteswired.com/2006/07/27/download-of-the-day-abiword/

Sorry about the hiatus - I was unlinked for a while. I’m back in the saddle now, though!

Got a few ego-booster quickies here for ya! (Not sure why the Google Blog Search feed likes dredging up old repeat entries - I will probably have to change strategies to keep getting these entries out…)

• http://freewaremac.net/2006/abiword-openofficeorg-and-neoofficej/ - Mentioned as a useful bit of freeware (actually Free-ware ) for the Mac, and preferred over OpenOffice.org Writer… Can’t complain about that!
• http://automatthias.wordpress.com/2006/04/29/tools-for-documentation-writing/ - We get some “props” for our DocBook support, and it looks like this person even posted before 2.4.5 and many DocBook import/export enhancements courtesy of Sum1… Did I mention how awesome several of our Summer of Code students are?
• http://copywriter.typepad.com/copywriter/2006/04/new_version_of_.html - AbiWord works as a “writer’s word processor” for this user, and she recommends it to other writers! Sounds good to me!
• http://portableapps.com/news/2006-08-10_-_abiword_portable_2.4.5 - Version 2.4.5 of AbiWord Portable has been released! For those of you who are just tuning in, AbiWord Portable (formerly Portable AbiWord) is a re-packaging of the AbiWord software for Windows that can be run without installation from a USB key or now a CD. It comes with a launcher that runs AbiWord and then cleans up afterward, so you can run AbiWord without touching the configuration of a computer. A commenter on this news item remarked on the “new” “elegant” icon, which I just had to check out for myself. It’s the same one that has been used since 2.4 was released, at least in the original packaging of AbiWord. Apparently this must be its debut in the Portable Apps version…

Till next time, keep marching ants!

Back again!

• The small size and efficient operation of AbiWord were the big draw for this blogger… The plugins available are also a hit http://www.ghacks.net/2006/07/18/abiword-open-source-word-processing/
• A brief, but fairly positive and accurate review of AbiWord! -
  http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/43935/download_free_text_editing_software.html
• A ha! This blog has a good idea for what you can do with the money you save (and time, of course, but they didn’t mention that) using AbiWord instead of MS Office. They also mentioned OO.o, but that negates the bonus time thing… http://basictech.wordpress.com/2006/07/19/dont-wanna-spend-bucks-for-ms-office-try-openoffice-or-abiword-free/
• Horror of horrors, this Mac user is trying to uninstall AbiWord! Hopefully a friendly response from the dev community will have them rethink that decision. http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1319920