kelvin@cs.utexas.edu (Kelvin Thompson) (06/17/89)
A few days ago I posted a nag about Word 4.0 not doing fonts correctly.
Several people replied that I could save documents in RTF format
for transferring between different Mac's.
I've now got a few questions about RTF:
[1] Somewhere I got the idea that RTF is an ascii file format,
and hence devours hugely more space than an equivalent native
document. True?
[2] Does the RTF format -- whether ascii or binary -- truly carry
*all* the information about a document? Graphics? Styles?
Pagination? Imbedded Postscript? And is all this editable
when you read the RTF file?
If the RTF format can describe everything the native format
does, and in roughly the same amount of space, it seems sort
of redundant. If Microsoft was to go add more features to
Word, they'd have to change the spec for RTF, which seems to
violate the reasons for having a public file format in the
first place (i.e. providing a stationary target).
[3] Do RTF files take any longer to save or load?
E-mail to me and I'll summarize.
--
-- Kelvin Thompson, Lone Rider of the Apocalypse
kelvin@cs.utexas.edu {...,uunet}!cs.utexas.edu!kelvin