Check out AbiWord 2.1.1 ("Experimental") for Mac OS X (Panther)

[Clinton MacDonald]

Friends:

For those of us who want better interoperability between our Mac OS X 
and Linux environments, or who just want to be freed from the 
vicissitudes of Microsoft (spit) Word, the wonderful folks at Abisource 
have released a preview version of AbiWord 2.1.1 for Mac OS X:

<http://www.gnomedesktop.org/article.php?sid=1706>
<http://www.abisource.com/download/development.phtml>

There is also a port of AbiWord available called XAbiWord that is the 
"official binary release of AbiWord for MacOSX (or Mac OS X, if you 
prefer)":

<http://www.abisource.com/~fjf/>

 From the ReadMe for AbiWord 2.1.1:

"AbiWord 2.1.1 for Mac OS X -- Warning: This software is a pre-release 
software, it may not work as expected."

My limited testing confirms that there are many, many bugs, but I am 
hopeful. The installation is drag-and-drop simple. Double-clicking on 
the icon brings up the AbiWord splash screen and an untitled document.

I *like* the simple flat gray theme of the icons in this version of 
AbiWord. It looks smooth and friendly, without being cartoonish. 
Command-S for "Save" is not yet enabled, but "Save As..." works fine.

Menu selection is smooth and quick (*unlike* its major competitor -- 
*cough*), and changing a few Preferences did not cause a crash (I often 
encounter Preference-related crashes in other beta software, sometimes 
even in release software).

I was unable to change paragraph spacing from "Single" to "Exactly 14 
pt" (my personal default for 12 point type); the paragraphs always 
defaulted to an unreadable "1 pt." I could, however change the font from 
"2004" (WTF?) to "Baskerville," and the font choice was reflected in the 
document. Having two documents open at once seemed to inflict some 
instability, and AbiWord crashed (leaving behind two documents, "AbiWord 
test.abw," and "AbiWord test.abw.CRASHED").

Opening an RTF document (the ReadMe from XAbiWord) was misformatted but 
readable.

Overall, I *LIKE* where this version of AbiWord seems to be going, and I 
offer the greatest encouragement to the developers. With increased 
stability and fixes to some of the features I use all the time (like 
paragraph settings), I can imagine AbiWord becoming my default word 
processor for Mac OS X.

Best wishes,
Clint

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-- 
Dr. Clinton C. MacDonald | <mailto:clint DOT macdonald AT sbcglobal DOT net>