A few days ago, I said I would review OpenOSX Office, which is a collection of applications, all running under Macintosh’s X11 version of the X Window system. The components are: AbiWord; Gnumeric; Diagram; Gnucash; Inkscape and Gimp.
Here is the OpenOSX company site.
The first of these I shall describe is AbiWord, which joins the longish list of word processors that over the years have been offered as cheap or free alternatives to Microsoft Word.
AbiWord as a word processor in its own right
Some prospective users are coming to AbiWord without previous experience with Microsoft Word, and are simply setting out to do word processing for the first time.
They will find that AbiWord can do all that is necessary to produce a range of different documents, from short letters and essays, through papers intended for publication in professional journals, right up to doctoral dissertations.
It can handle changes to fonts and margins (of course), produce hierarchical headings, do dot-point or numbered lists, construct tables, and insert pictures, spread-sheets or diagrams (especially those created with the companion programs in OpenOSX Office — Gnumeric and Diagram).
Macintosh users might be slightly surprised that AbiWord uses control-key combinations (e.g. ctrl+c for cutting and ctrl+v for pasting) where other Mac applications generally use the Mac command-key in these situations. This is easy enough to cope with.
AbiWord as an alternative to Microsoft Word
Those who are used to Microsoft Word might wish to know how AbiWord matches up to it. Does it offer the same functions, and how well do they perform? The short answers to these questions are “most of them,” and “almost as well, but differently.”
Many functions are implemented similarly to those in MSWord
I will not give a complete list of these; suffice it to say that any menu item not otherwise mentioned operates very much the same as its counterpart in Microsoft Word.
The items are not always in the same positions, nor on the same menus, as in Word, but they are there somewhere, and should not pose any problems for a Word user making the transition to AbiWord.
Some functions are different to those in MSWord
There are often equivalents to MSWord functions, but they have sometimes been modified (which can either be an advantage or a handicap).
One example of a command I use a lot is Microsoft’s ‘Paste Special’; this enables you to cut and paste a piece of text from, say, a web page, without importing its format, font and colour when you don’t want them, which a simple ‘Paste’ would do. In MSWord, selecting ‘Paste Special’ brings up a list of options, including the one that I mainly use: ‘Unformatted Text’. In AbiWord ‘Paste Special’ is replaced by ‘Paste Unformatted’, so getting there in one step.
The commands for producing tables are not as comprehensive or powerful as those in MSWord, but they do the job adequately, providing formatting options and the ability to split or merge cells and to convert table to text or text to table. Those familiar with MSWord tables will simply have to get used to doing things a little differently.
And AbiWord’s approach to mail merge is a little different from Microsoft’s, but in some senses more straightforward. Here is what an AbiWord mail-merge data file looks like:
FirstName,LastName,StreetAddr,City,State,Zip
Mark,Gilbert,666 Microsoft Way,Redmond,WA,
David,Chart,123 Easydoc Street,Userville,MD,12345
Dom,Lachowicz,777 GNU Ave.,Utopia,CA,02111
(Thanks to the AbiWord help facility for this example.)
Tabs can be used as delimiters instead of commas, and the data file can be saved with either a ‘.csv’ or ‘.tsv’ respectively. There is also an option to use XML merge data files, but AbiWord is reluctant to recommend it!
The Word equivalent has the same data, but kept in a table instead of this series of lists. If you already have a Word merge table, it can be converted to AbiWord form very easily, using the MSWord ‘Table to text’ command.
And to make use of this data, AbiWord provides an item on its ‘Insert’ menu — ‘Insert Mail Merge field’ — enabling you to paste required fields anywhere in the document that is to be mailed.
File compatibility with MSWord and other word processors
AbiWord claims to be able to work on files generated by a range of word processors: Microsoft Word (.doc, .dot); Rich Text Format (.rtf); Text and Encoded Text (.txt, .text); XHTML (.htm, .html, .xhtml), and, of course AbiWord (.abw, .awt) and GZipped AbiWord (.zabw).
The new Microsoft Word formats introduced with Office 2008 (.docx) are not dealt with (yet).
However, it is one thing to open a file, and another to preserve all its attributes.
I have tried opening existing MSWord files with my own re-defined paragraph styles, but although these appear on the style drop-down menu, they do not remain attached to the headings and so on from the copied file. I need to find out more, obviously!
I hope that I have given a sufficient taste here of the potential of AbiWord to make it attractive to anyone who wants to try it out, either as a new word processor, or as a substitute for Microsoft Word.
I acknowledge that Microsoft Word is a well-developed and powerful word processor, but perhaps it is possible to use a cheaper option for much of your straightforward work.
Happy experimenting!
If you liked this, why not treat me to a coffee (or a bone for Kafka)? Thanks, mate!
