To what extent are the word processor wars worsened by people not learning the common courtesy of saving texts in RTF before sending to someone outside their IT department's purview?
RTF is implemented differently by different software. It doesn't product the same results all the time.
RTF is a Microsoft invention, and from comments I have read by software developers, the documentation of the format leaves a lot of open areas that can be interpreted differently by different programmers.
If it works for you as an exchange format, great, but it isn't super dependable in my experience.
Plus, what version of the RTF spec does each side of the transfer expect? 1.3? 1.5? 1.6?
Check the WikiPedia entry- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTF>
RTF does keep you from spreading Word Macro virii.
My question is this: is there software out there that provides word processing WITHIN the RTF format?
See the programs noted in the link above.
I have been encouraging the use of HTML for many documents. (X)HTML is readable and editable by many programs. You don't need something like DreamWeaver, Nvu works great and it is free ( and a native interface OS X version is available ). Just because Word writes out Frankenstein HTML does not mean HTML can't handle many formatted documents.
The format that OpenOffice uses is based on XML, which allows a lot more character sets than RTF does. The OpenOffice format has been submitted to become an ISO standard, so that organizations ( say, governments ) can specify all information be submitted ( or stored, or archived ) in a format that is an accredited international standard, not a de-facto standard.
That is the real issue, MS Word format is a de-facto standard ( except in the legal profession ). Once there is a ISO/ANSI word processing standard format, the MS Word format is not as important. HTML has internationally agreed upon standards, even if some browsers don't support those standards well.
Charles Dostale System Admin - Silver Oaks Communications http://www.silveroaks.com/ 824 17th Street, Moline IL 61265 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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