Until the developers get a handle on the font rendering issues in the V. 2.4.x series, stick with the 2.2 series.

AbiWord is virtually unusable for Mac OSX in any of 2.4.x releases. Their BugZilla page is filled with users reporting kerning issues, rendering issues and printing issues. The developers were forced to acknowledge that the 2.4 series is a "work in progress" for Mac users, partcularly over the font rendering issue.

Version 2.2.10 is the last functioning version of AbiWord on the Mac. Any of the newer releases are unusable.