AbiWord supports both basic word processing features such as lists, indents and character formats, and more sophisticated features including tables, styles, page headers and footers,
footnotes, templates, multiple views, page columns,
spell checking, and
grammar checking. The Presentation view of AbiWord, which permits easy display of presentations created in AbiWord on "screen-sized" pages, is another feature not often found in word processors.
Interface AbiWord generally works similarly to classic versions (pre-Office 2007) of
Microsoft Word, as direct ease of migration was a high priority early goal. While many interface similarities remain, cloning the Word interface is no longer a top priority. The interface is intended to follow user interface guidelines for each respective platform.
Collaboration AbiWord allows users to share and collaborate on documents in a similar manner to
Google Docs, using a system known as GOCollab. Users can collaborate using a varitety of different protocols including
TCP and
XMPP, and formerly over AbiCollab.net, a web based service that facilitated collaboration between users.
File formats AbiWord comes with several import and export filters providing partial support for such formats as
HTML,
Microsoft Word (.doc),
Office Open XML (.docx),
OpenDocument Text (.odt),
Rich Text Format (.rtf), and
text documents (.txt).
LaTeX is supported for export only. Plug-in filters are available to deal with many other formats, notably
WordPerfect documents. The native
file format, .abw, uses
XML, so as to mitigate
vendor lock-in concerns with respect to interoperability and
digital archiving.
Grammar checking The AbiWord project includes a US English-only grammar checking plugin using
Link Grammar. AbiWord had grammar checking before any other open source word processor, although a grammar checker was later added to
OpenOffice.org. Link Grammar is both a theory of syntax and an open source parser which is now developed by the AbiWord project. == Version history ==