This page is listing what features might need to be in the toolbar on the OLPC. In some cases (i.e. Spell Check), when I say they are "out" I just mean there's no button, not that the feature isn't somehow represented in the UI.
That said, We don't have very good data on what kids really use Word Processors for, so all of this is based on my own intuition. It'd be much better to get real data here.
Font formatting (family, size, bold, italic, underline, color, highlight) This seems like it might be fun for kids to play with.
Undo/Redo These are pretty important for supporting an exploratory use pattern. Kids will be less likely to play if they have to worry about losing their work. This is especially important if we use direct editing.
Insert Image This could potentially be great fun, especially if integrated with the drawing app.
Table Tools These seem like they might have great educational benefit, for kids who want to work with tables of numbers or taxonomies or other kinds of structured data.
Document Structure tools (indent, bullet, etc) These may be more valuable because they can make Abi a tool for organizing ideas more than just getting text on the page
Printing There's a special joy that comes from seeing your documents in physical form, and I think it can be a strong educational motivator for kids, but certainly there will be many times when there is no printer available. Perhaps some classrooms will have one, but I'm sure many will not. The button could be present only if there's a printer available. We should probably talk to the OLPC folks about printing support.
Document tools (new, open, save, save as) Based on what Red Hat is doing, these seem to be unnecessary. In the "Shared Documents" section of the Sugar Design Review 2, they suggest that shared documents will be found through chat, through the "Everyone's page" or through a unique name of some kind. And with the OLPC's emphasis on sharing, I think we can assume that most documents will be shared. Red Hat also wants to move to a direct editing model, so explicit saving shouldn't be necessary.
This leaves open the question of how you create new documents, how you name them, etc. But I think it's save to say that these document functions should be de-emphasized if not eliminated.
Spell Check I think spell check is hugely critical, as it can be a very valuable language learning tool. That said, maybe we can just rely on inline checking and not have a toolbar button.
Show/hide formatting marks I don't think this is critical.
Zoom This might be quite important, given that the screen size is so small. But if the window is always maximized and we think you can fit a full page on the screen, maybe it's not so important.
Help is a nice idea, but it seems to go against the OLPC educational philosophy, which is to let kids explore, rather than telling them how to do thing.
Styles are very useful when creating large documents, but they're just a convenience. Their absence won't prevent you from doing anything, it just makes things more difficult.
Document History/Revision tools Given the emphasis on direct editing, these tools could either be seen as out of place or as even more important. With group editing of documents, it seems like revision tools could be really useful. But they confuse the whole direct editing concept, in a way.
Page Properties is an interesting one. If we're not printing, maybe it's not terribly important. If we leave AbiWord in "Normal Layout" at the standard zoom level, the page layout is somewhat superfluous. AbiWord becomes like a blank canvas at that point, rather than a piece of paper.
Word Count... only important for students and journalists? This needs some thought.
Paragraph tools (center, justify, columns, directionality) These are important document formatting and organization tools. But I'm not sure they have much educational benefit. Directionality is certainly going to be an issue for some countries.
Plugins, Scripts, Mail Merge These are powerful, but advanced features. They could be cut out on that basis, but that calls into question: why not let kids explore the advanced stuff? It will be a powerful learning experience.
Page Background might be fun for kids to play with.
Insert Clip Art could be really valuable, especially if it has words attached to the art, because it could help kids learn language. But the clipart collection on my system is pretty limited. It would be interesting to coordinate with Mikey Cooper, but he is using Mono, and that might be a problem.
Document Properties including Title and Author seem like something to try to keep, so that documents are marked by who's contributed to them. But then again, the authors could be automatically tracked through AbiCollab, no? Being able to change the title of the document might be important, but I'm not sure where to put that in the UI.
Find/Replace is really useful. But maybe find, at least, can be replaced by the search box, if they are planning on including fulltext search?
Insert Stuff (Page Break, Page Numbers, Header/Footer, Field, Symbol, etc) Insert Symbol might be important for some languages. Page Break, Page Numbers, and Header/Footer might be less important if we are moving away from printing and towards shared online documents.
Set Language might be important for some countries, or maybe for everyone if we want to encourage multilingualism.
Cut, Copy, Paste These are great tools, but most people use keyboard shortcuts. That said, without menus, how would kids learn shortcuts? It seems like there needs to be a high-level design decision on this one, as surely other apps will need cut/copy/paste functionality.