I'm extremely impressed with all that the AbiSource team has done to-date. I'd love to be able to support AbiSource by rolling out AbiWord and introducing it to others in the environments I provide support for. With that in mind, I have one or two humble suggestions from an implementer's perspective (disclaimer -- I'm no developer). It's just a "from the trenches" perspective on what I would face if, as a Sysadmin, I rolled out AbiWord to our non-tech-savvy staff. I'm not familiar with your specific development track, so my apologies if anything here has been discussed or tabled before.
1. To introduce AbiWord into an existing work environment, the ability to indicate a "default save-as" file-type is critical (at least, to me). For example, most of our documents are in WordPerfect and Word format; to have one of our non-computer savvy staff attempt to use AbiWord to open a file with the default *.ABW filter makes this a hard sell. If AbiWord were used for new files, no problem; but no one (at least, not myself) is going to convert all our old documents into AbiWord format in one night -- there needs to be a seemless way to introduce AbiWord into a non-tech environment over the course of several months. 2. This one is perhaps a longer ways down the road, but I'll mention it here for perspective's sake anyhow. Support for tables and mail-merges; even if very bare-bones, it would allow for at least an easier conversion of non-AbiWord document formats into AbiWord (the tables), and basic enough to automate some office functions (mail merge). Again, the AbiSource team is doing a great job and should definately follow their own timetable and schedule of features (as opposed to following someone else's). Hopefully, these suggestions are useful to your goals for AbiWord. Regards, - David
