Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Wed, 2 Feb 2005, sindi keesan wrote:

> Does anyone know if the BL3 abiword imports WORD and WP51/DOS tables
> properly?

My experiences with tables using Abiword may not be relevant. In any case,
they do not have to do with importing any documents made using Word that
contain tables. But here is what I know about table handling in general by
open source word processors, and some incidental information on it
concerning Word. One major problem with the main open source word
processor (OpenOffice) is that it will not allow table columns/rows to
span pages. Any column or row that extends beyond the page limit simply
gets unceremoniously cut off at the bottom of the page, and that's it
(this is fixed in the OpenOffice 2 branch, btw--due out later this
spring).  Trying to insert a 15-page table of this sort into a document
results in a document of one page with a truncated table. People at the
OpenOffice forum were regularly complaining about it butchering tables of
this sort created using Word. Since I was looking for exactly this sort of
functionality (page-spanning table-columns) for a certain task, I decided
to try Abiword to create such a table. I found that Abiword was capable of
creating my 10-page 2-column 1-row table. I saved the document as a Word
file as well, though I found that I was able to work on it only in the
native Abiword format due to the program's sapping my system's resources
(1Ghz Celeron, 512MB RAM) when trying to open and work with the resulting
.doc file. The system handled the document in native Abiword format
slightly better, but not much. I said earlier onlist that I thought
Abiword was still pretty buggy for this reason. I conclude from this that,
for smaller tables in Word format, Abiword may well work for you. Sorry I
can't be more definite.

James