TExtraDevices - RTF

rbuser

Hi,

Question for James Waler, unless someone else wants to take a stab at it.
The table at the bottom of:
http://www.waler.com/textradevices.htm
has a column for RTF as the target export format. In this column, the row
for RichText says "Yes", while the row for WPTools says "Image/Plain".

WPTools is supposed to be an RTF editor. What is it about WPTools that
causes its value for RTF as target to be different from RichText's value?

(Sorry, but I still don't get this, after many months of working with
WPTools & TExtraDevices.)

Thanks.

Mike Carroll
Sigma Data Systems, Inc.

rbuser

WPTools and other alternate RTF editors like RichView each support their own
flavors of RTF. Just like Word vs WordPad. In order to create an RTF file, I have
to merge the RTF contents from WPTools/Richview. This involves parsing the
RTF content for known commands and creating the new command relative to the
new main document. You cannot just insert the RTF code within an RTF stream
and get valid results. All colors/fonts/tabs/spacing is relative to the main document
or page. Since there are so many RTF commands to implement, I am only recognizing
some of them like WordPad vs. Word. As an option, I added RichTextAsImage so that
the file is more accurate to the original since I am giving WPTools a canvas to draw on
instead of parsing the content myself. This results in a more accurate file but the
content is no longer editable.

James Waler
Waler Ltd
http://www.waler.com

rbuser

Thanks, James, it sounds like RTF is not as standardized as I thought it
was.

Mike Carroll

digitalmetaphors

Even if you ignore the custom RTF engines, such as the one written for use
by/in WPTools, keep in mind that in MS Windows there are different versions
of RichEd dll's. Also, RTF is standardized, but you can use different RTF
standards such as RTF1 or RTF2 that the dll's support.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors