Word Processing for Everyone
AbiWord 1.0 ships

For Immediate Release

May 8, 2002 -- The AbiWord team is proud to announce the first global release of the award-winning Open Source word processor, AbiWord version 1.0.1. More than three years in the making, AbiWord is a reliable, cross-platform word processor with many powerful features.

AbiWord aims at robust inter-operability with existing products, including Microsoft WordÒ, Corel WordPerfectÒ, and others. AbiWord's goal is to incorporate the most useful features of these competing applications without the fluff, bloat, or slowness that generally accompany them. The result is a lean and mean word processor, the download size being less than 4 megabytes.

Translations and as-you-type spell checking are available for more 30 different languages on 6 continents, including Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, and Indonesian. An English Language Thesaurus for use within AbiWord can also be freely downloaded.

The worldwide team of AbiWord volunteers is already hard at work developing the next release of AbiWord, which will include advanced features such as tables, footnotes, and support for more complex languages. Users, writers, translators, testers, and developers are all encouraged to try out AbiWord and see what they'd like to add next.

Get AbiWord Now

AbiWord is available for Linux and other Unix variants, Windows, Mac OSX and QNX and is completely free. You can learn more about AbiWord from our website at http://www.abiword.com/.

AbiWord can be downloaded from http://www.abiword.com/download/.

AbiWord can be extended via plugins which can be downloaded from http://www.abiword.com/plugins.phtml.

AbiWord was initially developed by SourceGear Inc.; today, AbiWord development continues through the efforts of a worldwide team of volunteer developers. AbiWord is free software available under the GNU General Public License.

The AbiWord team can be contacted via email at: abi@abisource.com.