abiword.1

.\" -*- nroff -*-
.\" vim:set tw=78 noet:
.\" Copyright 1998-2004 AbiSource, Inc.
.\" AbiWord and AbiSource are trademarks of
.\" AbiSource, Inc.
.\"
.\" AbiWord is free software; you can redistribute it
.\" and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
.\" Public License as published by the Free Software
.\" Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
.\" option) any later version.
.\"
.\" This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
.\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
.\" implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
.\" FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General
.\" Public License for more details.
.\"
.\" Copyright 2009 Patrik Fimml
.
.TH ABIWORD 1 "2009-12-11" "AbiWord 2.8"
.
.SH NAME
abiword \(em flexible cross-platform word processor
.
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B abiword
.RI [ OPTIONS ]
.RI [ FILENAME... ]
.
.SH DESCRIPTION
AbiWord is a full-featured, efficient word processing application suitable for
a wide range of word processing tasks, and extensible with a variety of
plugins. It integrates with
.BR enchant (1)
to provide spell-checking.
.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.BI "\-g " W\fRx\fIH\fR[+\fIX\fR+\fIY\fR] ", \-\-geometry=" W\fRx\fIH\fR[+\fIX\fR+\fIY\fR]
Specifies window geometry at startup.
.TP
.BI "\-E " PLUGIN ", \-\-plugin=" PLUGIN
Execute the specified plugin instead of the main application.
.TP
.BI \-\-import\-extension= EXT
Import the given file as if it had extension \fIEXT\fR, overriding automatic
file type detection.
.TP
.BI "\-u " PROFILE ", \-\-userprofile=" PROFILE
Use \fIPROFILE\fR instead of the default ~/.AbiSuite/AbiWord.Profile to read
and store settings.
.TP
.BI "\-t " DEST ", \-\-to=" DEST
Convert the given file to another format, writing the result to
.IR DEST .
The format of
.I DEST
is determined by its extension.
.br
See also \fB\-\-to=\fIFORMAT\fR and \fB\-\-to\-name\fR.
.TP
.BI "\-t " FORMAT ", \-\-to=" FORMAT
Convert the given files(s) to the given format. Unless explicitly specified
with \fB\-\-to\-name\fR, the original filename will be used (with a different
extension, if necessary). See also \fBEXAMPLES\fR.
.RS
.TP
The more popular values for \fIFORMAT\fR include:
.TS
lb	lx.
abw	T{
Abiword XML format (\fBzabw\fR for gzip, \fBbzabw\fR for bzip2 compression)
T}
dbk	DocBook XML
doc	Microsoft Word binary format
docx	T{
Office Open XML (newer Microsoft Word versions)
T}
html	Hypertext Markup Language
kwd	KWord
odt	OpenDocument Text
pdf	Portable Document Format
rtf	Rich Text Format
sxw	OpenOffice.org Writer 1.0
txt	Plain text
.TE
.RE
.TP
.BI \-\-to\-name= DEST
Only useful in conjunction with
.BI \-\-to= FORMAT \fR.
Specifies where the converted document shall be written to.
.TP
.BI \-\-verbose= LEVEL
Set level of verbosity [0\-2], 2 giving the most detailed output.
.TP
.B \-h, \-\-help
Display a short help message and exit.
.TP
.B \-\-version
Report the version of AbiWord.
.
.SH EXAMPLES
To convert the document \fIexample.abw\fR to RTF:
.in +4n
abiword \-\-to=rtf example.abw
.in
The resulting file will be named \fIexample.rtf\fR.
.P
To print a document:
.in +4n
abiword \-\-to=ps \-\-to\-name=fd://1 \fIFILENAME\fR | lp
.in
.
.SH REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to the Bugzilla bug tracking system at
.RI < http://bugzilla.abisource.com >.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR enchant (1)
.SH HISTORY
AbiWord was started in 1998 by AbiSource Inc., a company founded by SourceGear
corporation. The initial plan was to build a free office suite named AbiSuite,
encompassing word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications. As
they didn’t have a usable product when their venture capital was up, the code
already developed (namely AbiWord) was made open source.  AbiWord development
was subsequently taken over by volunteers and is driven by the community to
date.