> Type a few word, hit "Save", and automatically get reasonable default fonts and margins? Check. Type a few more words, make some typos, have them fixed automatically? Check. Certain words need to be italicized or underlined? Check. Certain words need to be in a different font? Check. Who cares if it's consistent, the boss wants it bold so just make it bold. Indent the first line by X inches, double-space here, single-space there? Check. All accomplished with a few clicks of the mouse. No need to learn any command-line programs, formatting \Syn\{TaX}, or keyboard shortcuts. It's exactly what the majority of office workers need.
That's Abiword. A much smaller and cheaper piece of software.
That is all that most office workers need. So why is Office, a huge piece of software the default?
>"That's Abiword. A much smaller and cheaper piece of software.
That is all that most office workers need. So why is Office, a huge piece of software the default?"
Abiword's grammar checker is not nearly as good as Word's. That is specially in non-english laguanges. Also I would add to that list all the templates and design that Word brings out-of-box.
I am a weird case because I use Abiword at work and Office at home. And at least for short documents (10 pages max.) the experience on Word is just more enjoyable to me.
From a linguist's point of view, the language that English is grammar checked against in Word has always been a broken approximation of an uninformed prescriptivist's version of English.
An example opinion from the guy who wrote the book on English grammar:
Last I used Word it did not have any grammar checker for Swedish and its spell checking was terrible (though better than LibreOffice). It has hopefully improved the last about 5 years though.
I have actually only used one working spell checker for Swedish: stava. And the ideas behind it are trivial, so I guess that nobody else has written a specialized spell checker for Swedish. Generalized ones like ispell, aspell, hunspell and Word's do not work for Swedish.
"That's Abiword. A much smaller and cheaper piece of software."
LOL seriously? Look everybody, v2 even has footnotes and -gasp- tables! And they are 'very powerful' tables, too, because you can even merge cells (in a 'non-modal dialog', no less!)
You both got it wrong. It's not about size. Not about cost. It's about compatibility. People use word because their boss, publisher, or professor uses word. Because an entire ecosystem of office software integrates in word. Because kids taking a computer class in school learn Word commands, and nothing else. Because a perfectly styled document in LibreOffice doesn't always look right in Word.
More than 20 years later, Microsoft still survives off the popularity of DOS on IBM compatible pc's in the late 80s and early 90s. Their strategy since has been to further entrench themselves into our daily lives.
That's Abiword. A much smaller and cheaper piece of software.
That is all that most office workers need. So why is Office, a huge piece of software the default?