Re: "Rich Text" or .rtf format.

[Nathan Sivin nsivin@xxxxxxxx]

The Rich Text or *.rtf format is one designed by Microsoft for
conversions. I think in fact that it was the standard format for
some versions of Word, but I am no authority on bloatware. RTF
has the advantage of being pure ASCII in the narrow sense,
containing no characters below ASCII 33 or above 127. For
instance, after I converted an XY file to RTF, the markup that
begins each paragraph is
\pard \qr \s1600 \tx864 \tx11520
It produces very small files, less than half the size of the
Word97 format, and hardly bigger than XY files. Word can read it
directly. You can save a lot of storage space by saving Word
files in RTF format.

Note, by the way, that Greg Howe's file discussed in another
message this morning uses ASCII 7, and thus (like PC-WRITE, which
uses most of the ASCII 1-32 characters) is not ASCII in the same
extremely narrow sense.

Whether you can use RTF as an intermediary in conversions depends
on what your files are. If your version of Multimate (etc.)
offers a "save as" option for RTF, it's simple. If not, it is no
better than any other intermediary. It is also possible that the
Microsoft web site offers a conversion filter from Multimate to
Word. If so, again you won't need an intermediary.

Cheers,
--
Nathan Sivin
History and Sociology of Science
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia PA 19104-6304
(215) 898-7454
nsivin@xxxxxxxx