I've just posted a pre-release of AbiWord Portable 2.4.5 with OpenDocument support. This new release features the following changes:
Registry Changes Saved - Although AbiWord automatically reserves the abw and zabw file types and adds another entry to the registry on the local PC, the AbiWord Portable launcher automatically removes this when you close AbiWord. It will even preserve your existing registry settings if you have a local copy of AbiWord. And it has account type detection so this will work correctly with guest and limited accounts under Windows 2000 without error.
Live CD Support - AbiWord Portable now fully supports running from a CD. The registry backups are stored within the TEMP directory on the local PC while running, so the location you run from doesn't need to be writeable. Just be sure you run AbiWord Portable at least once from a writeable location before copying it to CD so it can generate a set of default settings.
In-Place Upgrades - AbiWord Portable now supports the ability to do what I'm calling an "in-place upgrade". This means that you can extract it right over an existing installation of AbiWord Portable without losing any of your existing data and it'll Just Work (tm). Obviously, this will be going forward as you'll need to manually upgrade this time due to the new directory layout.
WINE Support - The new launcher has been written and tested to work with Wine within your favorite UNIX/Linux distro. You can both install and run AbiWord Portable within Wine without issue. UPDATE: It looks like you can just do an install and configure it within WINE... the AbiWord renderer doesn't seem to work within WINE unfortunately.
AbiWord Plugin Installation Support - The directory structure of AbiWord Portable has been updated to work with the standard AbiWord plugin installers right out of the box. You can download the AbiWord Import/Export or Tools Plugins from the AbiWord download page and install them right into AbiWord Portable. When asked for the installation location, just be sure to change the default (C:\Program Files\AbiSuite2) to the location of AbiWord within AbiWord Portable (X:\AbiWordPortable\Apps\AbiSuite2).
New Splash Screen - The new splash screen will show even while the launcher is backing up your registry entries and prepping for launch, which is handy when running from a USB 1.1 device or slower CDROM drive.
Grab the self-extractor here:
AbiWord Portable 2.4.5 Pre-Release
Please give the new features a try and drop a note back with your thoughts.
UPDATE (Aug 9): There was a bug in the launcher's handling of INI files. It's been fixed in a new version of the launcher. Download the AbiWord Portable Launcher 1.2.1.3 and drop it into your AbiWordPortable directory.
Thanks,
John