Abiword:Cross Platform Free Word Processor

Jul 23, 2010 by Shivendu Madhava

Abiword is one of the more well known word processors available on the Net. It has an impressive feature list that contains most tools and functions that you would require from a word processor.

Not only is the standard feature list impressive but some of the additional features like cross-platform support and multiple format support are undeniably useful. Documents here are saved in plain readable text format with XML markup making them readable by most text editors. The good part though is that you can load and save files in multiple formats using what are called ‘importers’ and ‘exporters’ which are basically plug-ins which give the program a lot of flexibility.

Abiword currently supports MS-Word, RTF (Rich Text Format) and also HTML along with a couple of Abiword’s own formats. Being an Open Source project new plug-ins are bound to be under development so be sure to keep checking for additional plugins.System requirements are minimal and the loading time miniscule. Altogether, Abiword is a very useful piece of software and deserves the many awards that it has got over the years.