AbiWord 0.9.0

AbiWord is a free, open source cross-platform word processor. Version 0.9.0 is the first beta release. As a beta release, it comes with an anti-warranty. It will crash and do unexpected things, and some features will not work properly. You should not use it for any really vital work, and the normal rules about saving frequently apply even more strongly than usual.

However, a number of people have been using this version, and it is quite stable and powerful. Please try it, and report any bugs you find at http://bugzilla.abisource.com

These notes are aimed at people who have not previously used AbiWord, and thus do not specifically note changes from 0.7.14.

Please note that AbiWord follows the Linux kernel version numbering convention. The first number is the main release number; in this case zero, as there has been no release yet. An odd second number indicates a possibly unstable development release, while an even second number indicates a stable release. The third number indicates the number of releases in the current series.

Features

AbiWord can do all basic wordprocessing tasks, and has the following further features:

Free, open source software, available under the GPL.

Unlimited undo and redo.

Paragraph and character styles, both built in and user-defined.

Many different kinds of lists, which can be nested to any depth.

Headers, footers, and page numbers.

Spellchecking in many languages.

Localized for many languages.

Insert png format images.

XML native format.

Import Applix, Docbook, Microsoft Word, XSL-FO, XHTML, Palm document, Psion Texted, Psion Word, RTF, Text (ASCII, ISCII, or Unicode), and WML files.

Export the importable formats (except Microsoft Word), as well as LaTeX, and text files formatted for posting on USENET, with *bold*, /italics/, and so on.

Background, foreground, and highlight colors.

User-defined pages sizes, as well as many built-in (including the standard A0-A6 series as well as US sizes).

Full support for tab stops of all kinds.

Date, time, and document statistic fields.

Landscape and portrait page format.

Support for multiple columns, and for different numbers of columns at different points on a page.

Automatic numbering of sections and chapters.

Modeless dialogs, allowing you to work while the dialog is open.

Tab & line based table creation (full table support will be the defining feature of the 1.2 release of AbiWord).

Extremely clean XHTML export, using CSS and minimal XHTML, rather than large numbers of HTML tags.

Fully integrated with all supported Operating Systems.