RTF vs HTML

miscdas at boxfrog.com miscdas at boxfrog.com
Wed Jan 8 05:54:01 EST 2003


Wolfgang M. Bereuter writes: 

> 
> On Montag, Jänner 6, 2003, at 04:48  Uhr, Ron wrote: 
> 
>> I've been using the HTML prop to read/write text files and save formatted
>> texts. Now, with 2.0 ability to handle RTF text I want to asking about 
>> the plus/minuses of using RTF over HTML. My purpose is to save formatted text to regular text files that can be read by other apps (be it a browser or text editor), as well as my own rev app. 
>> 
>> Which would you go with?

[SNIP]
> Hello Ron,
> try exchange documents with regular (Win) Users. 

> If you do sharing documents if you are working on one document like for 
> translation or for any textoriented and multimedia production with 
> different tools, you will see very fast the difference about handling rtf 
> and html. In this case a "strong" standard is very important. Html is 
> *not* that standard. Rtf is it much more. Thats why I think that rtf support is so important in rev.  
> 
> Pls have a look at the rev archive, there is a thread about html rtf text 
> formating with rev.
> (f.e. Rev supports html 2.0. It does not support 4.0 or CSS...)
> But the rtf-format is supported from nearly any 20$ shareware wich is able to handele text... 
> 
> hope that helps 
> 
> regards
> Wolfgang M. Bereuter 
> 
If you or your users are going to be using MS Word as the RTF editor, 
BEWARE! Although there is indeed and RTF standard, it is a sufficiently 
"open" standard that compatibility issues creep in. MS Word includes RTF 
formatting beyond what is found in your "$20 shareware" editors that can 
cause problems. Just one example: create a document in Word and use full 
paragraph justification. Save the file as RTF. Now launch your favorite RTF 
editor (other than Word), open the RTF file created in Word, and lunch is on 
me if your full justified paragraphs are still full justified. Many of the 
"regular users", such as secretarys, that were mentioned need full 
justification for the bosses manuscripts. As I recall from some earlier 
tests, MC/RR doesn't support full justification. 

I think that even MS WordPad substitues some other formatting for full 
justification. 

For a second exercise, save that original doc as an HTML file and view it in 
your favorite browser. Surprise!  The full justification is still there, 
just as in the starting MS Word document. Now continue by launching your 
favorite HTML editor, open that HTML doc created in Word, and it's about 
70:30 that the full justification is gone. 

miscdas



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