Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
On Tue, 2002-03-26 at 16:23, Kent West wrote:
> I'm trying to educate some users on the dangers of proprietary file
> formats. But to make sure I've got my facts right, I need to ask: Is the
> Rich Text Format (.rtf) an open standard? (In other words, can I say
> something like "Use an open standard format, like .RTF"? Or do I need to
> say "Use a less proprietary format like .RTF"? I would prefer to say the
> first one.) I understand it was developed by Microsoft, but is it owned
> by Microsoft? Do I understand that there are actually two different .RTF
> formats?
As I understand it, Microsoft invented RTF and whilst it is technically
documented and open, the documentation is similar to the DOC file format
documentation -- incomplete and inaccurate. M$ change the RTF spec
every time a release of Word is made, which makes Word-produced RTF a
pain to read.
However, I'm sure there is a early specification which is quite usable
and human readable (I remember learning RTF around '94 when it could be
hand-coded) -- similar to whatever MS WordPad reads. The specification
must be somewhere!
> Is there a true open standard format, that is easily
> created/used/editted on any platform, other than text? (Text (ASCII? -
> and what's the difference between DOS ASCII and Windows ASCII, and Text
> ASCII, etc?) would be ideal, except for the inability to do such things
> as bold, font color, etc).
DOS and Windows ASCII are identical -- as ASCII only covers the lower
128 characters. There are differences in the upper 128 characters, which
depend on the codepage being used in DOS and the character set in
Windows. Microsoft make things even more fun by using a variant of the
ISO standards for Windows.
An open standard for documentation? (X)HTML is good if used correctly.
DocBook is excellent for technical documentation, LaTeX/TeX for
reports. There exist good WYSIWYG editors for these _if you pay money_
:(, but Lyx/Klyx is a good WYSIWYG semi-LaTeX editor apparently.
Ross
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Ross Burton mail: ross@burtonini.com
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