Welcome to my third release of the word processor AbiWord! AbiWord is part of a
larger project known as AbiSource, which was started by the SourceGear
Corporation. The goal of the project was the development of a cross-platform,
Open Source office suite beginning with AbiWord, the project's word processor.
AbiWord is also part of the Gnome office suite.


New in this release
-------------------

  * New version 2.8.6 with many new features compared to the last version 2.6.2.
  * Gnumeric spreadsheets can now be embedded into an AbiWord document. You can
    load and edit existing spreadsheets or create new ones. Gnumeric 1.10.17 is
    integrated into AbiWord for this. You don't need to install the standalone
    package of Gnumeric!
  * With the new plugin "OpenXML" you can now load and save documents in .docx
    format (MS Word 2007+).
  * Compiled with GTK+ 2.24.
  * Several bugfixes.


Discontinued features:
----------------------

  * Scripts (AbiScriptHappy plug-in)
  * PDF loader (never worked)
  * AbiDash plug-in


Features
--------

  AbiWord is a word processor with a lot of features:

     1. A familiar interface
     2. Outstanding file import and export, with support for MS Word,
        WordPerfect, OpenOffice, OpenDocument and more
     3. Gnumeric spreadsheets can be embedded into AbiWord documents
     4. Unlimited undo and redo capacity
     5. Solid (X)HTML export, with CSS styles support
     6. Images
     7. Spelling support, with optional underlining. Supported spelling systems:
        ispell, aspell and myspell.
     8. Bullets and Lists
     9. Styles
    10. Table of Contents generation and customization through the Stylist
    11. Complete, intuitive revisions-tracking support
    12. Nested tables support, nearly unmatched in the field
    13. Mail merge
    14. Bidirectional text support
    15. Command-line and server use modes for document processing capabilities
    16. HTML online help files are included (english, french, polish)
        ...


Gnumeric spreadsheets
---------------------

  How can you embed a Gnumeric spreadsheet? Choose the menu item "Insert/Object/
  New...", select "Gnumeric spreadsheet" in the requester and click on "OK".
  Afterwards a Gnumeric window will be opened, where you can create or load an
  existing spreadsheet. After saving the spreadsheet, it will be added to the
  AbiWord document.

  Important: You must select the area of the spreadsheet which should be
             viewable before saving!


Installation
------------

  The X11 environment AmiCygnix version 1.2 (or higher) must be installed
  before! AmiCygnix is available on OS4-depot (http://os4depot.net).

  To install the package, just click on the install icon. The data will be
  installed into the AmiCygnix package. Afterwards you can find the program in
  "Cygnix:Software/AbiWord-2.8".


Known Problems
--------------

  Please refer to "AbiWord-en.guide".


Donations
---------

  If you like to support my work, you can make a donation by using paypal:

   http://www.schwan-clan.de/amiga/Donate.html

  Thank you very much!


Thanks to...
------------

  ... Hans Verkuil for his initial port of X11R6.3 to OS 3.x
  ... Thomas Blatt (icons and beta test)
  ... Mario Locati (beta test)
  ... Michael Christoph (beta test)