The MIME type application/abiword-compressed is used to indicate the presence of AbiWord compressed document format files. This MIME type falls under the application category.

AbiWord compressed document files have the extension ZABW. They are software specific document formats that are created to compress a large existing document in to a smaller size. The normal document format for AbiWord is ABW.

AbiWord is an open-source software that was targeted from the very beginning at being consistent across platforms. The main project was called AbiSource, which was started by the SourceGear Corporation to make a completely open source office suite that would run across multiple platforms. AbiWord was intended to be the word processor of this suite.

AbiWord "s code was developed to be flexible enough to be easily portable to various different platforms. The software is now maintained by a community of coders and SourceGear is no longer a part of the project.

AbiWord has all the basic word processing features and some advanced features as well. It fully supports all the common formats and has its own formats in addition to them (ABW and ZABW). It supports writing in different directions and also in mixed mode. It has built-in support for over 30 different languages and has a plugin system for accepting third-party AbiWord Plugins.