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 |  | The Single Document InterfaceAbiWord is a Single Document Interface (SDI). That is,
    one AbiWord window can contain only one document at once. If you open
    another document or create a new one, a new AbiWord window will appear.
    Conversely, closing the AbiWord document will close the document. This is the opposite of Multiple Document
    Interface (MDI) programs, such as Microsoft Word 97,
    where all the documents are contained in the
    one and only Word window. Closing a document will not
    result in closing Microsoft Word. 
      
        |  AbiWord (SDI concept) under Windows
 Notice the Windows taskbar
 |  Microsoft Word 97 (MDI concept) under Windows
 Notice the Windows taskbar
 | The SDI technology was adopted for AbiWord for two major reasons: 
      Since AbiWord is being developed for several platforms at once (Windows, Unix and
        soon Mac), it was decided to stress the uniformity of these
        versions. Since Unix is based on the single document interface (SDI), that
        is what we decided to use. Thus every open document in AbiWord has a button on
        the taskbar.
 
The most familiar application to users today is without doubt the
        Internet browser. Most popular browsers today use the SDI concept. From this,
        most users are now used to this concept and less and less
        used to the alternative, the multiple document interface.
        This reinforces the choice of this technology. Thus,
        new users do not have to worry about knowing
        how AbiWord works; it works just the way
        they expect. So new AbiWord users are not disoriented. |