Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
On Thu, Mar 28, 2002 at 11:59:29AM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: On Wed, 2002-03-27 at 22:12, Dave Thayer wrote: On Wed, Mar 27, 2002 at 05:26:01PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: On Tue, 2002-03-26 at 21:50, dave mallery wrote: [...] i havent seen anyone mention XML. both star and open office now use it. it is open by default. AbiWord uses XML, and all the data is encoded in text, whereas OO/SO stores it's data in binary format. And OO/SO's binary file is a zip archive containing -- you guessed it -- xml files. How do you extract the zip portion out? Unzip will do the trick. Heres what's inside an OO spreadsheet (I haven't been doing much wordprocessing on this machine): [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/tmp$ unzip -v test.sxc Archive: test.sxc Length MethodSize Ratio Date Time CRC-32Name -- --- - -- 468042 Defl:N20792 96% 03-16-02 22:46 6de10ad4 content.xml 27205 Defl:N 2604 90% 03-16-02 22:46 890e8965 styles.xml 1137 Stored 1137 0% 03-16-02 22:46 8616e2a7 meta.xml 9108 Defl:N 1406 85% 03-16-02 22:46 a5f1a08e settings.xml 750 Defl:N 252 66% 03-16-02 22:46 5313cb53 META-INF/manifest.xml --- ------ 50624226191 95%5 files Looking at the compression ratios it's easy to see why they chose zip format over straight xml. dt -- Dave Thayer | If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about Denver, Colorado USA | cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all [EMAIL PROTECTED] | the time, for no good reason. - Jack Handey -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
On Thu, 2002-03-28 at 23:51, Dave Thayer wrote: On Thu, Mar 28, 2002 at 11:59:29AM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: On Wed, 2002-03-27 at 22:12, Dave Thayer wrote: On Wed, Mar 27, 2002 at 05:26:01PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: On Tue, 2002-03-26 at 21:50, dave mallery wrote: [...] i havent seen anyone mention XML. both star and open office now use it. it is open by default. AbiWord uses XML, and all the data is encoded in text, whereas OO/SO stores it's data in binary format. And OO/SO's binary file is a zip archive containing -- you guessed it -- xml files. How do you extract the zip portion out? Unzip will do the trick. Heres what's inside an OO spreadsheet (I haven't been doing much wordprocessing on this machine): Hey, yeah, you're right. When I saw the text, I figured it was a hybrid. [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/tmp$ unzip -v test.sxc [snip] Looking at the compression ratios it's easy to see why they chose zip format over straight xml. AbiWord documents aren't huge (or even big), and they are regular, old text xml files. -- ++ | Ron Johnson, Jr.Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | Jefferson, LA USA http://ronandheather.dhs.org:81| || | (Women are) like compilers. They take simple statements | | and make them into big productions. | | Pitr Dubovitch | ++ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
Lo, on Thursday, March 28, Markus Grunwald did write: Hello ! Please don't delete the attributions. Besides, do most Windows apps (Word, WordPerfect) allow saving to this format? Not saving as such, but it is possible to convert a Word document to postscript [...description deleted...] there you are. This is exact the way those 4MB postscript files are created. (compared to the 4kb postscript files from LaTeX). I never found a windows postscript driver that wasn't bloated. Oh, I never made any claims about the quality of the resulting postscript. In fact, in some situations, there's about a 3-line PCL header that gets written to the top of the file, and you have to go edit that out before gs can deal with the resulting file. The whole thing's a bit of a pain, but it's the best thing I've found. Richard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
On Wed, Mar 27, 2002 at 05:26:01PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: On Tue, 2002-03-26 at 21:50, dave mallery wrote: [...] i havent seen anyone mention XML. both star and open office now use it. it is open by default. AbiWord uses XML, and all the data is encoded in text, whereas OO/SO stores it's data in binary format. And OO/SO's binary file is a zip archive containing -- you guessed it -- xml files. dt -- Dave Thayer | If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about Denver, Colorado USA | cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all [EMAIL PROTECTED] | the time, for no good reason. - Jack Handey -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
On Wed, 27 Mar 2002 18:21:38 -0600 (CST), Richard Cobbe wrote: Lo, on Wednesday, March 27, Kent West did write: .PDF and postscript are great display formats, but they're not very useful for actual editting. Besides, do most Windows apps (Word, WordPerfect) allow saving to this format? Not saving as such, but it is possible to convert a Word document to postscript (and then on to PDF through ps2pdf or something similar). Install a new printer, attached to the local machine, on port FILE: (instead of LPT1:), and select a driver for a postscript printer. I usually use something like one of the HP LaserJets for this. You may need to tweak the driver's options for maximum PS compatibility. Then, open your app, print to this printer, type in the filename, and there you are. It is, however, a one-way translation; I don't know of any programs that allow you to open a PS file and edit it. I just happened to notice: pstoedit -- ps and pdf to editable vector graphics pstotext -- extract text from pdf and ps files -- gt It is interesting to note that as one evil empire (generic) fell, another Evil Empire (tm) began its nefarious rise. -- me Coincidence? I think not. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
On Wed, 2002-03-27 at 22:12, Dave Thayer wrote: On Wed, Mar 27, 2002 at 05:26:01PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: On Tue, 2002-03-26 at 21:50, dave mallery wrote: [...] i havent seen anyone mention XML. both star and open office now use it. it is open by default. AbiWord uses XML, and all the data is encoded in text, whereas OO/SO stores it's data in binary format. And OO/SO's binary file is a zip archive containing -- you guessed it -- xml files. How do you extract the zip portion out? -- ++ | Ron Johnson, Jr.Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | Jefferson, LA USA http://ronandheather.dhs.org:81| || | (Women are) like compilers. They take simple statements | | and make them into big productions. | | Pitr Dubovitch | ++ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
Hello ! Besides, do most Windows apps (Word, WordPerfect) allow saving to this format? Not saving as such, but it is possible to convert a Word document to postscript [...description deleted...] there you are. This is exact the way those 4MB postscript files are created. (compared to the 4kb postscript files from LaTeX). I never found a windows postscript driver that wasn't bloated. -- Markus Grunwald Registered Linux User Nr 101577 http://counter.li.orghttp://www.grunwald.2xs.de -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
On Wed, 2002-03-27 at 03:50, dave mallery wrote: i havent seen anyone mention XML. both star and open office now use it. it is open by default. XML is just a specification for creating new file formats. The file format which (Open|Star)Office uses is based on XML and is open, but I would hardly call it human readable. Ross -- Ross Burton mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Fingerprint: 1A21 F5B0 D8D0 CFE3 81D4 E25A 2D09 E447 D0B4 33DF -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
* Dave Sherohman [EMAIL PROTECTED] [020326 17:48]: How about HTML? Or, if you're willing to give up the idea of WYSIWYG and embrace WYAFIWYG (What You Ask For...), TeX/LaTeX rocks. Both HTML and TeX use plain-ASCII source files and there are GUI editors for both as well. Whats about the xml-based Textformat from Openoffice.org? As far as I know this is a real open format. -- cu Alex -- PGP key on demand, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] with subject get pgp-key -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
Ross Burton wrote: On Wed, 2002-03-27 at 03:50, dave mallery wrote: i havent seen anyone mention XML. both star and open office now use it. it is open by default. XML is just a specification for creating new file formats. The file format which (Open|Star)Office uses is based on XML and is open, but I would hardly call it human readable. Ross But to satisfy my original request, it doesn't have to be human readable. I'm looking to get my Windows users to stop using .DOC format, but I've got to give them something to use as a replacement. It needs to be *easily* readable on Win, Mac, and *nix (e.g. easily opened via MS-Word (cough gag)). From what I've gathered: .RTF is sortta open, but is a moving target because Microsoft (true to character), keeps changing the unpublished portion of the specs .txt is ideal universality, but is way too limited (no font changes, etc) .PDF and postscript are great display formats, but they're not very useful for actual editting. Besides, do most Windows apps (Word, WordPerfect) allow saving to this format? .HTML is an open, universal format, but displays differently in different situations, and the default open method is read-only instead of edit, so it's not as easy for average users to work with as the .DOC format. Abiword, Star Office, etc formats may be open, but MS-Word has to be able to open them in order for them to become common. Basically, there seems to be no solution. Perhaps the best solution is to stick with the .DOC format, and for me to use Star/Open Office to filter out any possible viruses on my end, and leave the rest of the users to their risky behaviour. Thanks for all the responses. Kent -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
Kent West [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But to satisfy my original request, it doesn't have to be human readable. I'm looking to get my Windows users to stop using .DOC format, but I've got to give them something to use as a replacement. It needs to be *easily* readable on Win, Mac, and *nix (e.g. easily opened via MS-Word (cough gag)). [snip] Basically, there seems to be no solution. Perhaps the best solution is to stick with the .DOC format, and for me to use Star/Open Office to filter out any possible viruses on my end, and leave the rest of the users to their risky behaviour. The real problem is that you're insisting on using MS-Word. MS tries really hard to make the latest doc format the most widely used, in order to lock in their users and force them to continuously upgrade. Consequently, MS-Word has very poor support for any non-doc format, and it will remain this way until someone puts significant financial pressure on them to support other formats. But, as long as MS has a monopoly, this can't happen. If you really do not want windows users to use the doc format, you *have* to move them away from MS Office. Try Star Office, or gobeProductive, or whatever instead. -- Brian Nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
On Tue, 2002-03-26 at 21:50, dave mallery wrote: On Wed, 27 Mar 2002, John F wrote: Dave Sherohman wrote: On Tue, Mar 26, 2002 at 10:23:34AM -0600, 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 [snip] I though RTF was actually an IBM invention, and was a response to Adobe's PostScript. I could well be wrong though. I seem to recall that RTF existed in IBM in 1992 anyway. i havent seen anyone mention XML. both star and open office now use it. it is open by default. AbiWord uses XML, and all the data is encoded in text, whereas OO/SO stores it's data in binary format. -- ++ | Ron Johnson, Jr.Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | Jefferson, LA USA http://ronandheather.dhs.org:81| || | (Women are) like compilers. They take simple statements | | and make them into big productions. | | Pitr Dubovitch | ++ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
Lo, on Wednesday, March 27, Kent West did write: .PDF and postscript are great display formats, but they're not very useful for actual editting. Besides, do most Windows apps (Word, WordPerfect) allow saving to this format? Not saving as such, but it is possible to convert a Word document to postscript (and then on to PDF through ps2pdf or something similar). Install a new printer, attached to the local machine, on port FILE: (instead of LPT1:), and select a driver for a postscript printer. I usually use something like one of the HP LaserJets for this. You may need to tweak the driver's options for maximum PS compatibility. Then, open your app, print to this printer, type in the filename, and there you are. It is, however, a one-way translation; I don't know of any programs that allow you to open a PS file and edit it. This is probably much more complicated than your users will want to deal with, but I find it a useful trick from time to time. Richard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
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? 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). Thanks for any comments! Kent -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
On Tue, Mar 26, 2002 at 10:23:34AM -0600, 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? My understanding is that there is an official RTF spec which is owned by Microsoft, but available to everyone, and a real RTF spec which essentially boils down to however the current version of Word feels like doing things. I would definitely consider RTF to be less proprietary rather than open. OTOH, RTF is substantially better than doc simply be virtue of not being able to host viruses/worms/trojans. 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). How about HTML? Or, if you're willing to give up the idea of WYSIWYG and embrace WYAFIWYG (What You Ask For...), TeX/LaTeX rocks. Both HTML and TeX use plain-ASCII source files and there are GUI editors for both as well. (If you're going to give people GUI HTML editors, though, you should beat it into their heads that, even though it's GUI, it's _not_ WYSIWYG. The HTML may render very differently on my screen than it does on yours.) -- When we reduce our own liberties to stop terrorism, the terrorists have already won. - reverius Innocence is no protection when governments go bad. - Tom Swiss -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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 -- Ross Burton mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Fingerprint: 1A21 F5B0 D8D0 CFE3 81D4 E25A 2D09 E447 D0B4 33DF -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
On 26 Mar 2002, Ross Burton wrote: On Tue, 2002-03-26 at 16:23, Kent West wrote: 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. Postscript is a good standard for distributing documents (not writing in them). PDF is becoming a standard of sorts. I think it's proprietary, but well defined and open for use. Many good tools exist on most major OSes to produce PDF. You won't want to edit in postscript or PDF, but will want to produe it from another format (e.g. Word, StarOffice, etc.). -- Paul F. Pearson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://home.hiwaay.net/~ppearson/ Lord heal our land. Father heal our land. Hear our cry and turn our nation back to You - Heal Our Land, _Magnify The Lord_ (Integrity Music) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
At 10:48 Uhr -0600 26.03.2002, Dave Sherohman wrote: OTOH, RTF is substantially better than doc simply be virtue of not being able to host viruses/worms/trojans. Are you sure? I vaguely remember recent 'words' even put active contents into rtf. I've once used a rtf to latex converter (written on C, running on both unix and mac, about 4-5 years ago), and it didn't work well at all especially with german umlauts, some portions of the document were converted right, others weren't, and the author of the program wrote me that he's really hating rtf because it's so messy/inconsistent. So I figure you could as well just use the binary .doc format (maybe mime-encode it if you want text :)). Christian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
Kent West [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Is there a true open standard format, that is easily created/used/editted on any platform, other than text? Well, it's a Microsoft standard with fairly accessible documentation, though at times it's been hard to get a hold of the documentation associated with the current version of Word. It does change at Microsoft's whim, and iirc has stuff in there like flags for table behavior telling whether to act like one version of Word or another. It used to be more open than it is now, I think Believe it or not, I believe that generally, there is more Linux support for Word format than RTF. -- Alan Shutko [EMAIL PROTECTED] - In a variety of flavors! Money is its own reward. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
Christian Jaeger [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I've once used a rtf to latex converter (written on C, running on both unix and mac, about 4-5 years ago), and it didn't work well at all especially with german umlauts, some portions of the document were converted right, others weren't, and the author of the program wrote me that he's really hating rtf because it's so messy/inconsistent. I think everyone who reads the spec says that. I was going to write an rtf-latex converter once, too -- Alan Shutko [EMAIL PROTECTED] - In a variety of flavors! My other computer is a Connection Machine. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
On Tue, 26 Mar 2002, Kent West wrote: 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). Off the top of my head, groff and TeX... -- Baloo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
On Tue, Mar 26, 2002 at 11:23:40AM -0600, Paul F. Pearson wrote: Postscript is a good standard for distributing documents (not writing in them). PDF is becoming a standard of sorts. I think it's proprietary, but well defined and open for use. Many good tools exist on most major OSes to produce PDF. You won't want to edit in postscript or PDF, but will want to produe it from another format (e.g. Word, StarOffice, etc.). Both PostScript [tm] and Portable Document Format [tm] are published proprietary formats of Adobe (Aldus). Adobe provides extensive documentation on these formats but neither is well suited for document authoring purposes. Adobe has a vested interest in seeing the widespread use of these formats, and therefore promotes their adoption among third party developers. -- Eric G. Miller egm2@jps.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
Dave Sherohman wrote: On Tue, Mar 26, 2002 at 10:23:34AM -0600, 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? My understanding is that there is an official RTF spec which is owned by Microsoft, but available to everyone, and a real RTF spec which essentially boils down to however the current version of Word feels like doing things. I would definitely consider RTF to be less proprietary rather than open. OTOH, RTF is substantially better than doc simply be virtue of not being able to host viruses/worms/trojans. I though RTF was actually an IBM invention, and was a response to Adobe's PostScript. I could well be wrong though. I seem to recall that RTF existed in IBM in 1992 anyway. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Is .RTF an Open Standard?
On Wed, 27 Mar 2002, John F wrote: Dave Sherohman wrote: On Tue, Mar 26, 2002 at 10:23:34AM -0600, 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? My understanding is that there is an official RTF spec which is owned by Microsoft, but available to everyone, and a real RTF spec which essentially boils down to however the current version of Word feels like doing things. I would definitely consider RTF to be less proprietary rather than open. OTOH, RTF is substantially better than doc simply be virtue of not being able to host viruses/worms/trojans. I though RTF was actually an IBM invention, and was a response to Adobe's PostScript. I could well be wrong though. I seem to recall that RTF existed in IBM in 1992 anyway. i havent seen anyone mention XML. both star and open office now use it. it is open by default. dave -- Dave Mallery, K5EN (r/h 7.2 krud; debian woody+ximian) PO Box 520 Ramah, NM 87321 no gates .~. no windows... /V\ /( )\ running GNU/Linux ^^-^^ (Linux TM Linus Torvalds) free at last! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
