Abiword 2.4.x has come of age. This is a professional wordprocessor,
with all the features that a power user needs -- you could even write
your PhD thesis with Abiword.
NOTICE: For Puppy 1.0.7 official version live-CD, most of the Abiword add-ons are in the live-CD, nothing extra to
install. The live-CD includes the American spelling dictionary, however you can add other languages, see below. Links
Grammar (for the grammar checking plugin) and gtkmathview (for the
equation editing plugin) are not in the official live-CD -- these have to be added, see below.
WWW docs: www.abisource.com/help/en-US/
README, spellchecking and templates.
For spellchecking, download a Abispell dictionary from the Abiword
download website sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=15518
and place it in /root/.AbiSuite/dictionary/.
You will have to uncompress the download file and you should have two files,
for example american.hash and american.hash-encoding.
See the above README for more details on getting spellchecking to work.
Note that you will need to go into "Edit -> Preferences..." to enable spellchecking as you type.
NOTICE: Puppy 1.0.6 official version has the American dictionary "built-in", located at
/usr/local/share/AbiSuite-2.4/dictionary/american.hash.
Abiword has a grammar-checking plugin, however the Links Grammar
package has to be installed for it to work. Run the PupGet package
manager (see Setup menu) to install Links Grammar. Note, the Links
Grammar package is named link_grammar-4.1.3.
After installing Links Grammar, start Abiword, then go to "Edit -> Preferences..." menu and turn on grammar checking.
NOTICE: Puppy version 1.0.6 official live-CD includes Links Grammar,
so grammar checking is immediately functional, however, you still have
to enable it in the Preferences. Puppy 1.0.7 and later does not have it in the live-CD.
This is new to the 2.4 series. It is a plugin, named AbiMathView, and it requires the gtkmathview package.
It is not WYSIWYG editing, as you have to enter a Latex equation, so you would need to become familiar with basic Latex syntax.
gtkmathview is a package that can be installed with the PupGet
package manager (see Setup menu). You need to install two packages,
libt1-1.3.1 (Type1 font rasteriser, used by gtkmathview -- actually, I
think this package is optional) and gtkmathview-0.7.5.
NOTICE: Puppy version 1.0.6 official live-CD includes gtkmathview
package, so equation editing is ready-to-go "out of the box". Puppy
1.0.7 and later does not have it in the live-CD.
Note, if you want WYSIWYG MathML equation editing, install Amaya,
which is a HTML editor. Again, this is a PupGet package, package name
amaya-8.8.1.
When you first start Abiword, you will see that the default font is Times New Roman, however, if you go to the font-selection list-box, you will see that Times New Roman is not a choice. When Abiword starts, it reads the file /root/.AbiSuite/templates/normal.awt, or if that doesn't exist Abiword falls back to reading /usr/local/share/AbiSuite-2.4/templates/normal.awt. File normal.awt is the default document template, and this file specifies the default font.
What is happening here is that Times New Roman is a MS Windows TrueType font, not in Puppy, so Abiword substitutes the closest that it can find, in this case, Nimbus Roman No9 L.
Note, if you have changed a selection of text to something and you want to change it back to the default Times New Roman, just highlight the text and choose "Normal" text style from the leftmost listbox.
Note, the advantage of using the generic name Times New Roman is for portability. If you create a document using Abiword in Puppy, if the document is opened in MS Windows then Times New Roman will be used and Windows won't have to try and guess what to use in place of Nimbus Roman No9 L.
If you want to use the actual MS TrueType fonts, not substitutes, no problem. Do this:
Note that MS Windows has four basic fonts that are in all versions of Windows, right back to 3.x. They are Arial (proportional, no serifs), Times New Roman (proportional, with serifs), Courier New (nonproportional, that is, equal spacing between characters), and Dingbats (symbols). For each of these, you need to copy four files -- there is a file for normal, italic, bold, and bold-italic.
After doing that, restart Abiword, and the fonts will be available.
NOTICE: Puppy 1.0.5+ may automatically create a link from
/root/.fonts to C:\windows\fonts\ at first bootup. If this has happened
for you, then you will automatically have all the Windows TTF fonts
available. If you do not want this behaviour (there was a report on the
forum that some Windows TTF fonts don't work right in Puppy), then
delete /root/.fonts and instead create a directory /root/.fonts and
then only place in it the TTF fonts that you want to use in Puppy.
There are many plugins available for Abiword, available from the Abiword web site.
Puppy has various plugins installed. Plugins are to be found in the
/usr/local/lib/AbiWord-2.4/plugins/ folder.
You can add plugins there, but they will get removed at a Puppy-version upgrade. But, you
can place further plugins into the /root/.AbiSuite/AbiWord-2.4/plugins/
folder.
You should not have to compile plugins yourself. You should be able to
find precompiled plugins via the Abiword website. They must be compatible
with the current version of Abiword, which is 2.4.1. If an Abiword plugin is
a .tar.gz file, you will have to extract the files.
Alternatively, if the plugin is an RPM file, the files can also be extracted
-- see instructions for doing this on the Puppy web site, Developer's
Page.
NOTICE: Puppy 1.0.6 (and later) official live-CD has a large collection of plugins, probably all you would want.