I've used Abiword a bit, but it has been a few years, and Abiword doesn't really come close to the Microsoft Word experience back in the day. People generally have their favorite MS Word version that they like before it "went downhill", and mine is Word 5.1a for Macintosh. This is the last version of Microsoft Word that was specifically designed as a Macintosh application, rather than a cross-platform application with a Mac port.
Microsoft's turned out some very high-quality Mac applications in the 1990s and 2000s. Another notable one is Internet Explorer 5, which is unrelated to the infamous Internet Explorer 5 for Windows (the one with poor standards compliance), other than the fact that the products are made by the same company, have the same name, and have the same version number.
I suspect porting had something to do with the quality; software that is actually _ported_ (as opposed to Java or Electron write-once-run-everywhere) often ends up better for the exercise.
Internet Explorer wasn't ported to Mac, though. Instead, a new piece of software with the same name was created. This is not some kind of nitpick or technicality; they were really quite different.
It's true, and it's acknowledged up-thread. All the other "IE5" releases are Trident ports, however, and I believe there are up to nine of them, depending on how you count:
Windows 3.1, Windows NT 3.x, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Solaris, and HP-UX.
In addiion, as you mention, an "IE5" of different lineage is also available for both Mac OS Classic and Mac OS X.
Here is another thing which may seem crazy in today's world: IE 5.01 was officially supported by Microsoft on Windows 2000 until 2010, more than 10 years after IE5.0's release!
Abiword is decent. I open it, and I start typing right away, no dialogs. The startup time is rather fast.
However, saving does not provide me with a default filename, so there is friction there.
In the status bar, the indicator text runs right up to the border edge, nobody took the time to ensure vertical and horizontal spacing matches up.
The menubar does not provide keyboard accelerators until after I press the Alt key -- too late in terms of discoverability.
The cursor actually disappears when I use the arrow keys to move around. It's not even blinking, it's just GONE, until I stop using the arrow keys, then reappears after a delay.
The spell-checker finds an spelling mistake in both "Abiword" and "abiword".
Using only the keyboard, I cannot figure out how to change the font size, except by going through the Format->Font menu. The Font dialog has invisible or nearly-invisible focus rectangles on most controls.
I just installed it to write this comment, and I found all this stuff in the first five or so minutes of using it.
It's a nice little word processor, and I'd use it in a pinch, but it's no Word 97.
Thank you. So far, I think that only addresses the menu accelerators issue, and none of the others I listed.
I think the fact that it is off by default in the first places illustrates my point quite well. And so does the fact that I have to seek out separate configuration for the toolkit.
Not only that, but on the very page you linked, people are complaining that even the setting does not work reliably. I know that when I tried to adjust it in the past for other apps it did not work for me.
