AbiWord is a cross-platform application, which means it runs on
Unix, Windows, and BeOS (and soon more, I hear). If we use these
components, we either isolate them to one platform (Unix), or use them
in a cross-platform way (gnome-xml should work for this). Configuration
processes, printing, and component architecture are all hard problems,
and they become three times as hard when you have to solve them for
three architectures.
We plan on using GNOME components for a GNOME front-end for AbiWord
(and have that front-end under development now).
-- Shaw Terwilliger