Agreed.  If this change causes any real inconvenience, we could easily
implement that functionality.  However, AbiWord has not yet really begun to
build a real user base, as far as we know.  I suspect that worldwide, the
vast majority of all actual documents created and saved with AbiWord are
right here at our offices.  :-)
At some point, we will certainly make a commitment to file compatibility
going forward.  I don't think we've really done that yet, but we're getting
close.
Eric W. Sink, Software Craftsman
eric@abisource.com