I am going to start my review of Abiword, an open-source word processor available for Mac, Windows and Linux, by talking about Firefox.
Firefox is an open-source web browser, also available for Mac, Windows and Linux. Firefox does things the right way. Firefox behaves the same way, no matter what platform a person is using. Firefox looks the same, and there are themes and extensions to make Firefox fit in well whichever computer you’re using. Firefox is an example of something done right.
Abiword, on the other hand, at least on the Macintosh, is a prime example of something done very very wrong.
I am typing this review of Abiword using Abiword, and am relying completely on touch typing and the squiggly red line to tell me if I’ve made any mistakes in spelling. As you can see from the screen shot, the quality of the text drawing is utterly horrible. Some letters are nearly stacked on top of each other, while others are drawn so as to be nearly invisible. The drawing to screen is so bad that sometimes the cursor will appear to be in the middle of a word, when in fact it is at the end. The kerning between letters is so awful that in the second word of this sentence, an “R” and “N” side by side end up looking like “M.” Large gaps appear when no spaces (much less extra spaces), exist.
It’s a simple thing, really: make sure the text looks good on the computer screen. It’s not nearly the only thing to look at when reviewing a word processor, but unfortunately, that simple failure is enough for me to not recommend Abiword to a single person.
(My review of Abiword for Linux, on the other hand, will be glowing with high praise, but that’s a review for another time.)
If we ignore the deficiencies for the moment, as difficult as that might be, we will see that Abiword does show the possibility of being a high-quality product. In fact, Abiword has more in its favor than it does against it!
For one, Abiword will feel very familiar to anyone used to Microsoft Word. The menus and tool bars aren’t organized exactly the same, but are very similar. Many of the tools a Microsoft user would be used to can be found in Abiword. Tables, columns, text boxes, mail merge, numbered lists, footnotes, end notes, table of contents… all are easily accomplished by Abiword.
Abiword also has a track change feature (although it is listed simply as “Revisions” under the “Tools” menu), which makes it one of only three word processors I am aware of for Macintosh that has this feature, along with Microsoft Word and OpenOffice. For many users, Microsoft Office is too expensive, and OpenOffice too unwieldy (it is not a native application, although there is a Java version being worked on), so if the ability to track/add/accept/deny changes is a key feature, then Abiword is a very attractive offering.
Abiword also includes some feature relating to the web, including the ability to view your work, while editing, as a web page, and the option to preview your work in a web browser. In addition to some rare features, Abiword also has many thing a computer user in 2007 would expect out of his/her word processor. Automatic spell checking (visible in the screen shot), automatic word count, styles, tables, all are easily available.
As is a large group of plugins, which allow Abiword to check a paper for grammer, to query Google directly, to import formats not natively supported, to import a web page, and more.
As far as compatibility with other word processors, Abiword has a healthy list of formats it will save to. There is, first of all, Abiword’s own format – .abw – along with Microsoftt Word, html, Rich Text, Plain Text, OpenOffice, OpenDocument, LaTex and a few zipped formats to save space. Also, as every Mac OS X program does, Abiword can print directly to Adobe’s PDF format, for perfect compatibility, although little in the way of editing features.
So, in conclusion, it is my opinion that as it currently sits, Abiword is not ready for prime time for Mac users. Get the text rendering taken care of, and Abiword – which is open-source and completely free – could be a heavy hitter among Mac word processors. As it is at the moment, however, Abiword is simply a pain to use.
