Re: RTF - proprietary or open?

On Tuesday 10 July 2007, debian-user-digest-request@lists.debian.org wrote:
> > Which brings us back to my original point; why not RTF? It's apparently
> > a fairly open format, and apparently virtually all word processors can
> > read and write it.
>
> I do not know if it is the format itself, or the limitation of the
> applications I use, but RTF documents loose a lot of formatting, and
> cannot be expected to look the same even when opened in the same word
> processor.

This is part of the problem with any format. A program should read 100% of what it writes. Features not officially implemented in RTF can be implemented using proprietary commands. These should work in and out of the same program (they would/should be ignored by other programs, gracefully).

Problems mostly occur with embedded objects and various commands implemented as "optional". Again, in and out of the same program, all should be fine (but then again they did not hire me to implement their RTF :-) ). Optional commands (and most embedded objects are) should! have an alternate field so at least the other program will show something is missing, what and where.

> This is much worse than opening DOC in OpenOffice.org, or
> opening DOC created in OpenOffice.org in Word.
Now that this ia available, use it. However, it is only as good as the implementation and would be subject to the same cudos as RTF.

Maybe Sun does a better job then Microsoft for compatability among their own coding including the MSOffice interface. I haven't tried it.

> It is great for sharing content with basic formatting, but not for
> actual documents. Well, that is my experience at least.
For a while, RTF as the only show in town. This is changing but not overnight.

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