AbiWord v2.9.1 is the first public development release towards the next stable AbiWord version, AbiWord v3.0.0. In addition to hundreds of bug fixes, this release contains a number of exciting new features. We invite users and developers to try and test this release. Please note however that we do not consider it ready for production use yet.

We'd like to thank all the developers, translators, users, testers, and everyone else who have spent so much of their free time on improving AbiWord. Thanks for making this great release possible!

Unicode Support for Windows

AbiWord 2.9.1 becomes the first release of AbiWord having the complete native Unicode support for Windows. This finally allows Windows users, from Windows 2000 onwards, to run AbiWord having the interface in their native or favorite language.

Paragraph Borders and Shading Support

AbiWord now supports adding borders around paragraphs and giving them a background color. This can be controlled using a new Borders and Shading dialog. Figure 2 shows this new Borders and Shading dialog.

Improved Localizations

AbiWord v2.9.1 also comes with much improved localizations for many languages. The enthusiasm shown by the translators and localization experts have improved many existing localizations to AbiWord. The status of the translations can be seen on our AbiWord translation pages for both this developer release, and the official stable AbiWord release.

RDF Support in both OpenDocument (.odt) and AbiWord (.abw) files

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is the base layer of the Semantic Web. RDF allows the meaning of things to be specified in a manner that a computer can understand. Including RDF in documents opens the door for AbiWord to know that "Fred" is a person with a specific phone number and entry in your mail client contacts. If you are meeting at the "Town Hall" then AbiWord can know which one, that it is a reference to a building, and the exact location of the Hall you mean. This allows a document to be comprised of not only text and style information but also to make the semantics of the text available to the computer so it can offer you help.

Initial support for RDF in 2.9.1 allows RDF information to be saved and loaded in both OpenDocument (.odt) and AbiWord (.abw) files. A developer API is available for RDF now as well.

Our thanks go out to the NLnet Foundation, a strong and dedicated supporter of open standards, for supporting this work.

A Telepathy Backend for the Collaboration Plugin

AbiWord's collaboration plugin gained the ability to share documents with contacts using Telepathy. That means you can collaborate over the internet in real-time with anyone that has a Jabber/XMPP account. Telepathy can support many more IM networks, so look out for your favorite network soon.

We'd like to say a big thank you to Collabora for helping out during the creation of this backend and providing the needed server infrastructure. Thanks also go out to the NLnet Foundation for providing the support and funding to make this happen.

An Experimental EPUB Plugin

A new experimental EPUB plugin allows the creation of EPUB 2.0.1 documents directly from AbiWord. EPUB files are better known as e-Books, or digital books. Also it allows user to edit existing EPUB files using AbiWord.

Windows 64 bit Support

AbiWord v2.9.1 also comes with support for the 64 bit version of Windows. At the moment we do not provide a 64 bit installer for Windows yet, but everything is in place now to be able to do that in the future.

Reviving the Mac OS X Port

AbiWord was available in the past for the Mac OS X platform, but it fell behind when our volunteers became unable to support it. But now there is a considerable effort underway to stabilizing the Mac OS X port of AbiWord and bring it back up to speed. A number of build fixes have been made to allow developers to join in on the work, and a good number of crashes has already been fixes. Figure 5 shows a teaser of AbiWord 2.9.1 running on Mac OS X again!

... and more changes all over the map!