RTFText, HTMLText, and Formatted Content in RR

[miscdas at boxfrog.com]

Wolfgang M. Bereuter writes:
[snip]
> 
> On Friday, Jul 18, 2003, at 03:25 Europe/Vienna, Dan Shafer wrote:
>>  
>> 
>> RTFText supports a tiny subset of the RTF file format. The docs list the 
>> formatting controls in RTF that are supported by RR. Out of something 
>> like 1300 control words in the RTF spec, RR supports approximately 30. 
>> The support is so thin that even a fairly simple book chapter -- which 
>> includes things like bulleted lists, code samples, and four-level 
>> headings, renders quite poorly and unusably.

Yes, it's a shame for those that want to develop text-centric apps.  MC/Rev 
look to the developers to help prioritize where to put their $$ for 
new/improved features. So, don't expect text handling improvements to 
develop very quickly. 

> I have the same rtf problem since the beginning. Write and format in one 
> tool and transfer all that without loosing the formating to other tools. 
> Thats very important for writing or working with a lot of text, 
> translations and so on. I have struggled a lot for the rtf feature in 
> rev...
> Now we have it at least!!!
> I know its not perfect, but again we have it...;)
> The biggest problem is -as always- M$.

I must correct you here. The problem is not MS per say, but rather the RTF 
specification; it is closer to a "guideline" than to a specification that 
explicitly states what is and is not allowed.  MS simply includes more 
"features" in their interpretation of the RTF specs than most other 
companies do. There are some good things that come out of it, such as text 
with full justification. The bad part is, VERY few programs know how to 
display fully justified text. So, the choice is to give it up, or use HTML. 
(Although, if my memomry serves me correctly, Rev choked on imported fully 
justified HTML as well.) 


> But there is ( I dont know) no 
> other way to deal with formated text between OSes.

No? What happened to HTML? 

> What I do is: I write in Mellel OSX only). It does good rtf import also, 
> but I have not imported Word rtf files until now. I write in it
> I select the text copy it to the clipboard
> set the rev textfield to rtf and paste it to the rev textfield.
> That works fine. Yes you have to do a bit of fine tuning with tabulators, 
> but not the whole slave formatting job again and again. Nearly 95% of the 
> formatting is correct here... (Dont know what happens if the text is very 
> big, I paste only small parts to the rev textfields up to 3 pages)
> Maybe there is a way for XML I dont know how this works...
> The future could be pdf import..? 
> 
> Hope that helps 
> 
> regards
> Wolfgang M. Bereuter 
> 
===== 

miscdas