AbiWord 2.8.1 – The Best Free Multilingual Word Processor?

AbiWord is arguably one of the best light word processing applications at any price. But FREE, makes installing this superb application a “no brainer”.

I recently downloaded and installed the Beta version of MS Office 2010 for testing, and I must admit, I’m blown away. Microsoft seems to be hitting all the right notes lately with the release of a bevy of updated products, including Windows 7.

But, not many of us need the power and the amazing functionality of Microsoft Word – or, lets face it, the major expense. A free word processor, like AbiWord, will meet the every day needs of the majority of users.

AbiWord, which is an open source application, has been designed to integrate perfectly with the operating system it runs on, and there are many, including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X (PowerPC).

There’s no need to worry about document compatibility issues with AbiWord since it can read, and write, all industry standard document types, including Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, Office Open XML (MS Word 2007), Rich Text Format (RTF), HTML web pages, and many more.

If you’ve used MS Word in the past, you’ll encounter no learning curve with AbiWord. It features a similar looking interface to Word, with it’s basic character formatting, paragraph alignment, spell checker, interactive rulers and tabs, styles, unlimited undo/redo, find and replace, and image support.

If you’re running on an older system with limited resources, you’ll be glad to know that this application has a very small resource footprint, and that allows full functionality on systems that are not considered “State of the Art”, by today’s standards.

I find AbiWord with its surprising amount of features and simple straightforward interface, to be the appropriate word processor I need running in the background, while I’m on the Internet on one of my older systems. Its small memory footprint, as opposed to memory hogging Microsoft Word, is ideal. In fact, portable AbiWord is my word processor of choice for my portable office on my USB key.

The following graphic shows a previous review of AbiWord written on this application.

Fast facts:

Multi Platform

Internationalized

Advanced document layout options

Tables, bullets, lists, images, footnotes, endnotes and styles

Available in most common, and many not-so-common languages

Spell checker

Dictionaries for over 30 languages

Supports right-to-left, left-to-right, and mixed-mode text

The above feature allows support for languages like Hebrew and Arabic

Mail Merge capabilities

Powerful collaboration capabilities – allowing multiple people to work on one document at the same time.

Integrated with a new online web service called AbiCollab.net, which lets you store documents online, allows easy document sharing with your friends, and performs format conversions on the fly.

System requirements: Most UNIX systems, Windows 95 and later, QNX Neutrino 6.2.  A Mac OS X native port is also available.

Download at: Download.com

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The Best Free Word Processor – AbiWord – Multilingual MS Word Alternative

A friend called me recently and wondered if he could “borrow” my copy of MS Word so that he could update a saved copy of his resume in Microsoft Word format. It seems he no longer had access to Word.

I pointed out to him that he could simple download any one of the many free alternatives to Word that are available for download; most of which “save” and “open” in Word’s .doc format. It surprised me to learn that he was unaware that there are free alternatives to Word, of which, AbiWord is arguably one of the best of these light word processing applications.

AbiWord has been designed to integrate perfectly with the operating system it runs on, and there are many, including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X (PowerPC), ReactOS, and BeOS. This great application has been written to take advantage of the functionality provided by the system it runs on, such as image loading, or printing capabilities.

AbiWord is no slouch when it comes to being able to read and write all industry standard document types, like OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, Rich Text Format, HTML web pages, and many more.

There’s no learning curve involved with AbiWord since it features a similar looking interface to Word, with it’s basic character formatting, paragraph alignment, spell checker, interactive rulers and tabs, styles, unlimited undo/redo, find and replace, and image support.

AbiWord has a very small resource footprint, which allows full functionality on systems that are not considered “State of the Art”. For those users with underpowered systems (by modern standards), this alternative light word processors should prove to be ideal.

I find AbiWord with its surprising amount of features and simple straightforward interface, to be the appropriate word processor I need running in the background while I’m on the Internet. Its small memory footprint, as opposed to memory hogging Microsoft Word, is ideal for most of my day to day work. In fact, portable AbiWord is my word processor of choice for my portable office on my USB key.

As you can see from the picture below, this article was written on AbiWord.

Features:

Multi Platform

Internationalized

Advanced document layout options

Tables, bullets, lists, images, footnotes, endnotes and styles

Available in most common, and many not-so-common languages

Spell checker

Dictionaries for over 30 languages

Supports right-to-left, left-to-right, and mixed-mode text

The above feature allows support for languages like Hebrew and Arabic

Mail Merge capabilities

Download at: Download.com

AbiWord – Free Multilingual Word Processor for Windows, Linux

Recently, I got a call from a friend who had saved his resume in Microsoft Word format, but who no longer had access to Microsoft Word. As a consequence, he could not update his resume. He wondered if, he could “borrow” my copy of Word to install on his computer so that he could revise his resume. It struck me that he, like many computer users, was unaware of the many free alternatives to Word that are available for download, most of which “save” and “open” in Word’s .doc format.

AbiWord is arguably the best of these in the class that I refer to as, light word processing applications. AbiWord has been designed to integrate perfectly with the operating system it runs on. It will take advantage of the functionality provided by the system, such as image loading, or printing capabilities.

As important, AbiWord is able to read and write all industry standard document types, such as OpenOffice documents, Microsoft Word documents, WordPerfect documents, Rich Text Format documents, HTML web pages and many more.

AbiWord has a quite small resource footprint, which allows full functionality on systems that are not considered “State of the Art”.

I find AbiWord with its surprising amount of features and simple straightforward interface, to be the appropriate word processor I need running in the background while I’m on the Internet. As stated earlier, its small memory footprint as opposed to memory hogging Microsoft Word, is ideal for most of my day to day work.

In fact, as you can see from the lead picture, this article was produced on AbiWord.

Quick facts:

• Multi Platform
• Internationalized
• Advanced document layout options
• Tables, bullets, lists, images, footnotes, endnotes and styles
• Available in most common, and many not-so-common languages
• Spell checker
• Dictionaries for over 30 languages
• Supports right-to-left, left-to-right, and mixed-mode text
• The above feature allows support for languages like Hebrew and Arabic
• Mail Merge capabilities

Download at: Abisource

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