Using AbiWord
Spell checking
To enable spellchecking-* Download a Abispell dictionary from the AbiWord download website
* Uncompress the downloaded file, you should have two files, for example american.hash and american.hash-encoding.
* Place the files in /root/.AbiSuite/dictionary/
* Go into "Edit > Preferences..." to enable spellchecking as you type.
Grammar Checking
Abiword has a grammar-checking plugin, however the Links Grammar package has to be installed for it to work.After installing Links Grammar, start Abiword, then go to "Edit -> Preferences..." menu and turn on grammar checking.
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.
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.
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.
Also see
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