AbiWord: PuppyLinux

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This is an old revision of AbiWord made by darkcity on 2011-07-10 09:35:29.

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AbiWord

Abiword is the default word processor in many versions on Puppy. Not to be be confused with the simpler text editor, the default of which is GeanyIDE.

Available from:
Puppy Menu > Document > AbiWord
or
Puppy Menu > Document > Document/Publishing > AbiWord
or
Clicking on Write on the Desktop (when set as default word processor)

Official Page
AbiWord Help

Forum Topics

AbiWord 2.8.2
AbiWord 2.8.6 from Debian for Puppy 5
French help for AbiWord 2.8.6

References

http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=01727
http://www.t2-project.org/packages/abiword.html

Appendix

NOTICE: For Puppy 1.0.7 official version live-CD, most of the AbiWord add-ons are in the live-CD, nothing extra to install. The live-CD includes the American spelling dictionary, however you can add other languages, see below. Links Grammar (for the grammar checking plugin) and gtkmathview (for the equation editing plugin) are not in the official live-CD -- these have to be added, see below.

Spell checking
/usr/local/share/""AbiSuite""-2.4/README.txt README, spellchecking and templates.

For spellchecking, download a Abispell dictionary from the AbiWord download website sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=15518 and place it in /root/.AbiSuite/dictionary/.

You will have to uncompress the download file and you should have two files, for example american.hash and american.hash-encoding.

See the above README for more details on getting spellchecking to work.

Note that you will need to go into "Edit -> Preferences..." to enable spellchecking as you type.

NOTICE: Puppy 1.0.6 official version has the American dictionary "built-in", located at:
/usr/local/share/AbiSuite-2.4/dictionary/american.hash.

Grammar Checking

Abiword has a grammar-checking plugin, however the Links Grammar package has to be installed for it to work. Run the PupGet package manager (see Setup menu) to install Links Grammar. Note, the Links Grammar package is named link_grammar-4.1.3.

After installing Links Grammar, start Abiword, then go to "Edit -> Preferences..." menu and turn on grammar checking.

NOTICE: Puppy version 1.0.6 official live-CD includes Links Grammar, so grammar checking is immediately functional, however, you still have to enable it in the Preferences. Puppy 1.0.7 and later does not have it in the live-CD.

Equation Editing

This is new to the 2.4 series. It is a plugin, named AbiMathView, and it requires the gtkmathview package.

It is not WYSIWYG editing, as you have to enter a Latex equation, so you would need to become familiar with basic Latex syntax.

gtkmathview is a package that can be installed with the PupGet package manager (see Setup menu). You need to install two packages, libt1-1.3.1 (Type1 font rasteriser, used by gtkmathview actually, I think this package is optional) and gtkmathview-0.7.5.

NOTICE: Puppy version 1.0.6 official live-CD includes gtkmathview package, so equation editing is ready-to-go "out of the box". Puppy 1.0.7 and later does not have it in the live-CD.

Note, if you want WYSIWYG MathML equation editing, install Amaya, which is a HTML editor. Again, this is a PupGet package, package name amaya-8.8.1.

Fonts

When you first start Abiword, you will see that the default font is Times New Roman. However, if you go to the font-selection list-box, you will see that Times New Roman is not a choice. When Abiword starts, it reads the file /root/.AbiSuite/templates/normal.awt, or if that doesn't exist, Abiword falls back to reading /usr/local/share/AbiSuite-2.4/templates/normal.awt. File normal.awt is the default document template, and this file specifies the default font.

What is happening here is that Times New Roman is a MS Windows TrueType font, not in Puppy, so Abiword substitutes the closest that it can find. In this case, it is Nimbus Roman No9 L.

Note: If you have changed a selection of text to something and you want to change it back to the default Times New Roman, just highlight the text and choose "Normal" text style from the leftmost listbox.

Note: The advantage of using the generic name Times New Roman is for portability. If you create a document using Abiword in Puppy, if the document is opened in MS Windows then Times New Roman will be used and Windows won't have to try and guess what to use in place of Nimbus Roman No9 L.

If you want to use the actual MS TrueType fonts, not substitutes, no problem. Do this:

Use the Puppy pmount program (in the File Managers menu) and mount the Windows C: drive.

Create this folder: /root/.fonts/

Copy font files from C:\windows\fonts\ folder to /root/.fonts/ folder.

Note that MS Windows has four basic fonts that are in all versions of Windows, right back to 3.x. They are Arial (proportional, no serifs), Times New Roman (proportional, with serifs), Courier New (nonproportional, that is, equal spacing between characters), and Dingbats (symbols). For each of these, you need to copy four files there is a file for normal, italic, bold, and bold-italic.

After doing that, restart Abiword, and the fonts will be available.

NOTICE: Puppy 1.0.5+ may automatically create a link from /root/.fonts to C:\windows\fonts\ at first bootup. If this has happened for you, then you will automatically have all the Windows TTF fonts available. If you do not want this behaviour (there was a report on the forum that some Windows TTF fonts don't work right in Puppy), then delete /root/.fonts and instead create a directory /root/.fonts and then only place in it the TTF fonts that you want to use in Puppy.

Plugins

There are many AbiWord Plugins that allow you to extend AbiWord in various ways.

Puppy has various plugins installed. Plugins are to be found in the /usr/local/lib/AbiWord-2.4/plugins/ folder.

You can add plugins there, but they will get removed at a Puppy-version upgrade. But, you can place further plugins into the /root/.AbiSuite/AbiWord-2.4/plugins/ folder.

You should not have to compile plug-ins yourself. You should be able to find pre-compiled plug-ins via the AbiWord website. They must be compatible with the current version of AbiWord, which is 2.4.1. If an AbiWord plug-in is a .tar.gz file, you will have to extract the files. Alternatively, if the plug-in is an RPM file, the files can also be extracted -- see instructions for doing this on the Puppy web site, Developer's Page.

NOTICE: Puppy 1.0.6 (and later) official live-CD has a large collection of plug-ins, probably all you would want.

AbiWord spell checker
Australian English (Version ??? , released Jun 29, 2005) http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?p=4544#4544]abispell-en-AU.pup 697.04 KB
US English (Version ??? , released Jul 03, 2005) - http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?p=5102#5102]abispell-en-US.pup, 696.48 KB
http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?p=5078#5078]Instructions for other languages

PuppyLinux : AbiWord