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Release Notes
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Thank you for your interest in this Preview Release of AbiWord!

---- About AbiWord

AbiWord is an "Open Source" word processor.  (If you would like more
information about the concept of Open Source, you might start looking
at www.opensource.org.)

Because AbiWord is Open Source, it is freely distributable and
available for use by anyone, without restrictions.  With AbiWord,
there is no need to worry about piracy.  We encourage you to make as
many copies as you like and to give them to your friends and
colleagues.

Note that AbiWord is not "shareware".  You are under no moral or legal
obligation to pay anyone for this right to use this program.

If you are not familiar with this kind of software, please rest
assured that there is no catch.  AbiWord is free, and it will always
be free.  It is developed in a public fashion, by members of the
software community from all over the world, communicating and
collaborating together via the Internet.

---- Using AbiWord

Please remember that AbiWord is not yet a shipping product.  Many
features are still missing, and the application has not yet undergone
extensive testing.

Our primary reason for making AbiWord available to you now is to allow
everyone the opportunity to see its current status.  AbiWord is under
constant development, and new releases are being made available on a
frequent basis.  The software is improving steadily, with each new
release containing more features and more stability.  You may download
new releases as often as you like.

Despite these disclaimers, you may very well find AbiWord to be useful
even now.  A number of people have successfully used AbiWord to write
a variety of documents.

---- Getting Help

Unfortunately, neither technical support nor a user manual is
available yet.  These will be available from AbiSource in the near
future.

In the meantime, your best resources for getting help with AbiWord are:

- Visit the AbiSource website at www.abisource.com.  Here you will
  find a growing amount of information, including Frequently Asked
  Questions.  You may also download the latest version of AbiWord.

- Interact with other users of AbiWord.  AbiSource provides an email
  list for AbiWord users.  Information about subscribing to this list
  is available on the AbiSource website.

---- Helping

If you would like to join the community of people who are developing
AbiWord, there are lots of ways you can help, even if you are not a
computer programmer.

If you are in fact a programmer, and would like to work on the
project, see the developer information on our website, join the
abiword-dev mailing list, and ask what needs to be done.  There are
always features or ports which need attention.

If you are not a programmer, you can still join the abiword-dev
mailing list and contribute in other ways.  The easiest way to help is
to simply use the program and report any bugs you find.  A tool called
Bugzilla is available on our website for exactly this purpose.

---- Supported Platforms

AbiWord is a cross-platform application, meaning that it was designed
to work well on multiple types of computers and operating systems.

At the present time, AbiWord is supported on Windows (including
Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT 4.0), Linux (including Intel
and Alpha), and a variety of other UNIX-like systems (including
Solaris, and *BSD).

Other operating systems will be supported in the future.

AbiWord is not yet available for the Macintosh, but efforts to remedy
this situation have begun.

---- Legalese

Copyright 1998,1999  AbiSource, Inc.
All Rights Reserved

This program 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.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA  
02111-1307, USA.

AbiSource, AbiWord, and AbiSuite are trademarks of AbiSource, Inc., in
the United States and other countries.  AbiSource's logos and
AbiSource product and service names are also trademarks of AbiSource,
Inc., which may be registered in other countries.

