423: Abiword 2.6.3

September 05, 2009 — BarryK

I have been experimenting with Abiword 2.6.3 and the 2.6.8 plugins. Seems to be working fine.

One interesting discovery, that would explain why the Presentation plugin did not work in earlier testing with Abiword 2.7.x -- it requires the Loadbinding plugin.

I compiled Link-grammar 4.6.1, as I would like the grammar plugin to be working.

Here is how I compiled everything:

abiword 2.6.3

error, chooses internal goffice, so edit 'configure', change "libgoffice-0.4" to "libgoffice-0.6":



GOFFICE_VERSION_REQUIRED='0.4.0'

goffice_modules="libgoffice-0.6 >= $GOFFICE_VERSION_REQUIRED"



# ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --enable-printing --enable-threads --disable-gucharmap --disable-scripting --without-ImageMagick



link-grammar 4.6.1

# ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --build=i486-pc-linux-gnu



abiword-plugins 2.6.8

# ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --build=i486-pc-linux-gnu --disable-all --enable-abigrammar --enable-freetranslation --enable-gdict --enable-presentation --enable-bmp --enable-jpeg --enable-librsvg --enable-mswrite --enable-OpenDocument --enable-OpenWriter --enable-pdf --enable-xhtml --with-abiword=../abiword-2.6.3 --without-boost --enable-loadbindings

Note, I didn't compile the OpenXML plugin as it needs the 'boost' package. Note, technosaurus has compiled Abiword 2.7.10 with OpenXML, and found that it only needs one small library out of boost. I suppose we could add the OpenXML plugin to my package afterwards.

Comments

Abi 2.6.3 vs Abi 2.7.10 use
Username: charlie6
Hi, [b]I think better stay with 2.6.3[/b] and wait for a next evolution of abiword - developers are thinking about a 2.8 release. I have tested abi 2.7.8. or 2.7.10 (thanks Barry and technosaurus!) I use abi 2.6.3 every day for conventionnal office work. I do not see dramatic differences between those two versions except that the available pets (addons and plugins) for 2.6.3 allows a better rendering of .doc and .docx files, and formats for save operation. On the other side, it would be very interesting if equivalent pets could be developed for abi 2.7.8 already present on puppy4.3.beta1 ..or even 2.7.10. (I am speaking from my office user point of view). I have made comparisons using OpenOffice.sfs as a reference for rendering of .doc documents. On 2.7.8 and 2.7.10 as well, .doc documents containig very simple drawings (made with Word-built-in-drawing tool), accentuated or formatted characters are poorly or not at all rendered. (I have sent some material to abiwords bug report forum about all this). The same documents are quite identically rendered on abi2.6.3+(available addons and plugins).pets. Whatever your choice, many thanks again for all your time and efforts !

Abiword vs OO
Username: edoc
"We have tried to use Abiword in 4.21 and Fatdog with very disappointing results - constant problems with altered formatting when sharing documents with MS Word users no matter if we use .doc or .rtf. Additional problems with mishandling certain characters, e.g. "?" OO has none of these problems on the same laptops. If a newer version of Abiword is more cross-app and common-format compatible then that would be great!

Tags: woof