Free word processor challenges Microsoft Word

I came across an interesting project this weekend that is basically a proofof concept for an idea I've been wrangling with for a while now. But thisproject actually exceeds my expectations, which is what makes it sointeresting. It goes like this: What would happen if a group of developersgot together and created a word processor that duplicated, say, 90% of thefunctionality in Microsoft Word? And then they released this product, forfree, over the Internet? In my imagined version of this scenario, thisproduct would run on Linux, not Windows, of course, since that's where you'dbe likely to see this sort of development occur.

Well, it's happening. But it's much more exciting than what I had imaginedbecause the product--called AbiWord--is in active development and it runs onWindows 9x/NT/2000, Linux, Solaris, and the Be OS. The creation of this wordprocessor is happening under the banner of Open Source, so the source codeis freely available; only the AbiWord name is copyrighted (as is Abi, thename of the company creating it).

What's most amazing about this project, however is that its native fileformat is XML, not yet another proprietary format. And it also reads andwrites HTML, RTF, plain text, WordPerfect, and Microsoft Word documents forcompatibility.

AbiWord is also beginning to support some of the more advanced Wordfeatures, such as on-the-fly spell checking, though the current versiondoesn't yet support that nice right-click correction feature we're used toin Word (remember, this thing is in active development; it's not done yet).

In its current form, AbiWord isn't complete and certainly can't replaceMicrosoft Word on any typical user's system. But the kernel of the idea isthere and you can see that this is going to be something special, a truecompetitor for Word. And it's free. In the future, when this product is"feature complete," it will make a compelling case for foregoing the expenseof Microsoft Word. And it runs on Linux and the Be OS, which makes itcompatible with the other leading Intel x86 OSes.

For more information, please visit the Abi Web site.

The Windows download is currently less than 1 MB, which is prettyimpressive; it also makes one wonder why Word 2000 is so huge. Granted,you're not going to get all of Word's features... yet. But I suspect mostof the important ones are on the way. This is definitely a product to watch.

--Pau