Free word processing program similar to Microsoft Word. It is suitable for a variety of word processing activities and supports a number of document types including Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, Open Document (OpenOffice.org), Office Open XML (MS Word 2007), RTF, HTML, Palm and more. It includes both grammar and spelling checkers as well as an array of other handy features including mail merge capabilities. It also has a plugin system allowing you to add features with available add-on plugins.

Enjoy your favorite Word Processor on the operating system you like to use - be it Windows, Linux, QNX, FreeBSD or Solaris. AbiWord has been designed to integrate perfectly with the operating system it runs on. It will take advantage of the functionality provided by the system, such as image loading or printing capabilities.

What use is a Word Processor when you can't share your documents with your friends? AbiWord is able to read and write all industry standard document types, such as OpenOffice.org documents, Microsoft Word documents, WordPerfect documents, Rich Text Format documents, HTML web pages and many more.

Give your document that professional, scientific or fun-to-read look using AbiWord's advanced document layout options. Use tables, bullets, lists, images, footnotes, endnotes and styles to enhance the way your document looks.

This is the latest developmental version of AbiWord. It represents the community's first steps towards a major stable update, which will be version 3.0. Version 2.9.1 contains a number of new features, including full unicode support, paragraph borders and shading, RDF support in OpenOffice and AbiWord native formats, and an experimental EPUB plug-in, allowing users to write eBooks from directly within AbiWord itself. Version 2.9.1 also introduces full support for 64-bit versions of Windows, while the Mac OS X build has also been resurrected, although a public release is not yet available.

The developmental version is considered an unstable release, and not recommended for production or everyday use. Instead, stick with the latest stable build (v2.8.6) instead.