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AbiWord-2.5.0 released!

Submitted by msevior on Sun, 2007-01-14 18:18. AbiWord
AbiWord

AbiWord v2.5.0 Released

The AbiWord team is very proud to announce version AbiWord v2.5.0 of the popular cross platform word processor. This is the first snapshot of the development that will lead to AbiWord 2.6.

This snapshot allows interested developers, testers and users a sneak preview into the future of AbiWord.

New features of this release include (amongst others):

  • A new Pango based renderer for Unix platforms, improving support for languages such as Thai and Arabic
  • Cross platform libgsf integration, allowing the user to open files on remote shares (the last part holds for the Unix platform for now)
  • Cross platform Glib integration, meaning less custom AbiWord specific code to maintain
  • Support for the Bonobo component framework has been deprecated (Unix platforms)
  • Improved the build system to be more standards conformant (for example, "make dist" and "make distcheck" now work)
  • Experimental AbiWord GTK+ widget, with accompanying Python bindings
  • Various toolbar improvements, most notably the improvements to make them work better on small screens (Unix platform)
  • A massive amount of work on all of our popular import and export filters
  • A new experimental collaboration plugin (only available on Unix for now)
  • A new GNOME Office integration plugin, replacing the old GNOME Office Charting plugin (Unix platforms)
  • Improved command line handling, allowing input from standard input, and output to be directed to standard output (examples here).
  • Improved printing from the command line, deprecating our old custom postscript driver
  • Lots of updates to our translations
  • Various Drag & Drop and Clipboard handling improvements
  • Improved modularisations for resource constrained devices, such as optional printing and spelling support
  • Improved support for running AbiWord in non-UI mode (sometimes also referred to as "server" mode, as offered by the AbiCommand plugin); most notably the requirement for a (fake) X server has been removed.

    • AbiWord v2.5.0 is parallel installable with AbiWord v2.4 so users can try it out without disturbing their
    stable AbiWord 2.4 version (make sure you specify an installation directory seperate from your AbiWord 2.4 installation on Windows systems!).

    We are very much interested in any bug you may find. Please report these to http://bugzilla.abisource.com/.
    Binaries will hopefully show up within a few days.

    While we encourage people to try out the new snapshot, please be aware that is a development snapshot and is not expected to be stable in any sort of way.

    Availability: http://www.abisource.com/download/development.phtml.

    More information: http://www.abisource.com/.
    Enjoy!
       The AbiWord Development Team

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    I care too much about Abiword to be "Nice"

    Submitted by BrendaEM on Thu, 2007-02-01 00:55.

    I filled out bug reports on this a long time ago. No one listened. This forum is on Gnomedesktop.org, suggesting that some people who actually use Gnome and GTK+ applications might submit comments.

    I just can't believe that the Abiword team would just remove a partially implemented feature, and bug-check the regression. Facing quotes are still needed; it was a waste of time to remove what they have done.

    Is Abiword a text editor or a word processor? Gnome already has a nice light text editor. We need a nice light word processor that can create quality documents--not text. Unfortunately, we, as people are biased by what we see. A document written without facing quotes will look less professional to many readers.

    No commercial company would dare sell a word processor without facing quotes in this day and age. Other word processors are not going to remove their facing quotes just to level the playing field for Abiword, are they?

    Web pages and programs do use plain quotes, but read a newspaper, a magazine, a book. Read the credits on a movie. Read a CD-Cover. Do any of these have straight quotes?

    Additionally, changing facing quotes to plain ones is an easier matter than changing plain quotes to facing ones.

    Do you want Abiword to be successful or not?

    Facing Quotes?

    Submitted by BrendaEM on Tue, 2007-01-16 12:55.

    Sadly, I see no mention of the custom/facing quotes.

    On the last official release, I was baffled to learn that the option for custom/facing quotes had been removed, because the underline code was buggy. Meaning that: someone wasted time reorganizing the menus, testing and retesting, when any reasonable person would have wanted to get this "feature" working, a typographic feature lacking in Abiword that can found ninety year old mechanical typewriter. This is the face of an open source leadership failure.

    Abiword has a lot going for it: it's small, multi platform, and it's free, which is important to students and people who do not have extra money to send to an illegal monopoly. I use OpenOffice for my word processing needs, but I try every release of Abiword, hoping to find facing quotes implemented. I look forward to adding it my electronic quill collection.

    Re: Facing Quotes by Anonymous George (not verified)
    Smart Quotes by Anonymous George (not verified)
    Hmm by Anonymous George (not verified)
    Re: Facing Quotes? by Anonymous George (not verified)
    While abi may not do by Anonymous George (not verified)

    What about ODF read/write support ?

    Submitted by Anonymous George (not verified) on Tue, 2007-01-16 10:12.

    Hi, I use Abiword 2.4.4 on Ubuntu. There is not adequate support for ODF. What is the situation/plan about ODF now? I did not find such information on the Abiword homepage.

    You could try reading the

    Submitted by uwog on Tue, 2007-01-16 18:57.

    You could try reading the changelogs for example: http://www.abisource.com/changelogs/2.4.5.phtml and http://www.abisource.com/changelogs/2.4.6.phtml

    You could try reading

    Submitted by Anonymous George (not verified) on Tue, 2007-01-16 17:49.

    You could try reading chnagelogs, such as http://www.abisource.com/changelogs/2.4.5.phtml and http://www.abisource.com/changelogs/2.4.6.phtml