AbiWord is a free word-processing program distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Supported platforms: Windows, Linux, macOS, SkyOS, and others. It is included by default in Xubuntu and Debian distributions.
The name AbiWord is part of a root from the Spanish "Abierto" ("open"). AbiWord was originally a product of SourceGear, which was later maintained and developed by a volunteer team.
The first version was released to the public on April 18, 2002, and did not support tables, which was criticized by most users. Tables began to be supported in version 2, which was released in mid-September 2003.
AbiWord features
The program code is based on the GTK+ library components. According to the developers, it can be built for Windows, FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, QNX and other operating systems. The official website offers links for downloading the Windows, macOS and Linux builds as well as the source code.
The size of the installation package for Windows is about 8 megabytes (dictionaries and extensions are not included). For Linux, the package weighs about 3.5 megabytes. AbiWord is translated into many languages, including English.
The editor functions according to the WYSIWYG principle, there is support for basic word processing functions:
- text styles and formatting;
- ability to insert footnotes and headers;
- creation of lists and tables;
- inserting and scaling images;
- header formatting;
- English spellchecker;
- printing.
The editor does not provide built-in mechanisms for creating graphical elements, as well as grammar checking or automatic hyphenation. Supported the format of Word (DOC), as well as ABW (own development), HTML, RTF. With additional plugins, you can import documents in WPD, ODT, SDW and other formats.
