19 December, 2005

OpenDocument plugin for AbiWord is "finished"!

This should be my last week of work on this project, although I will continue to support it fixing the bugs that are likely to appear over time (as it gets tested by users).

Both exporter and importer sides have all features implemented, but I'm far from stating that they are really finished. After all, what piece of software ever gets finished? :-)

The import isn't lossless and I don't know if it ever will. AbiWord implements some features very differently from OpenDocument and some others are not implemented by AbiWord at all (it's not a critique, the two programs are just different from each other, that's all) with frames (i.e. textboxes and wrapped images) being the most problematic feature.

The export is in a better situation. AbiWord implements a kind of subset of the OpenDocument features, so that's an easier job.

But this does not mean that the plugin is unusable. It in fact does a pretty good (lossless) job handling most common types of documents.

The bottom line is: It's ready and you can use it, but don't expect it to be perfect. And please, make a bug report when you find one! :-)

It was great to get involved with the AbiWord community. Thanks all of you guys!

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