Date: prev next · Thread: first prev next last
2015 Archives by date, by thread · List index


Hi :)
It's always best to have an original in the ODF format (for text-based
documents that is Odt, for spreadsheets it would be Ods, and for
presentations it would be Odp) before saving in any of the non-standards
formats.  ODF is used by many programs and all implement it the same way as
each other.  Only MS seems to have any trouble implementing it but then
they seem to have trouble implementing their own newer written
specifications too.

For working with other people the older Microsoft formats tend to be usable
almost anywhere and on almost anything.  That might be one reason why MS
developed their newer formats that struggle almost everywhere on anything
and often don't even seem to work properly in other versions of MS Office.
One of the stated reasons for developing the newer MS formats were to
"increase interoperability", just the same as the promises for the Rtf
format.  Both seem to have had the same amount of 'luck' in this regard and
often seem the most unreliable formats of all.  Each seems to have many
very different implementations that don't always work well together.  With
the newer MS formats these are called "transitional" formats as though they
are aiming to comply with their own written specification.

The older MS formats from 2003 and before,
Fie - "Save As ..." - "MS Word 1997/2000/Xp/2003"
are probably the best formats to use if you need to share documents and
collaborate with people or machines who are somehow unable to install
useful programs.


Wordpad was designed as a short-term stop-gap freeware version of MS Office
so that people could still open some of their documents and carry on with
some of their work before buying one of MS's main profit-makers.  It's a
convenience rather than something to rely on.  A neat trick when it works.

Regards from
Tom :)



On 27 May 2015 at 07:34, Brian Barker <b.m.barker@btinternet.com> wrote:

At 17:47 26/05/2015 -0400, Eric Beversluis wrote:

I've got a book-length document heavily formatted in LO writer, which
I've exported to rtf. I'm trying to understand exactly what gets included
in that new file.


Surely all or almost all of the facets of your document?

 When I open it in WordPad on Windows it shows what I would expect an rtf
document to look like--a continuous document, no page breaks, and minimal
formatting.


You are here describing not an RTF document but the ability (or
inability!) of WordPad to use and display aspects of such a document - page
breaks being a case in point.

 When I open it in LO on Linux, however, I get a strange output with some
but not nearly all of the odt formatting that I assumed would be stripped
out when saving as rtf.


I'm not sure why you would assume this. RTF was Microsoft's "internal
markup language used by Microsoft Word" (Wikipedia) - so will surely be
capable of containing most of whatever Microsoft Word could handle (at some
previous time). In any case, it shows that the RTF version of your document
contains most of your formatting.

 When I try to open it in WordPad in Wine, Wine freezes up.


No comment.

 What I'm concerned about is what will happen when I try to import this
rtf into Scrivener or use it to generate an epub version.


Why not try it?

 So, again, my question is what all is included in that new rtf file and
do I need to do anything to get a 'cleaner' rtf file.


By "cleaner" do you mean "corrupted" - in other words, with much of your
formatting destroyed? Wouldn't it be more straightforward to remove
whatever formatting is not required before saving (a copy of?) the
document? If you want no formatting, save as Text.

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker



--
To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscribe@global.libreoffice.org
Problems?
http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be
deleted



-- 
To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscribe@global.libreoffice.org
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Context


Privacy Policy | Impressum (Legal Info) | Copyright information: Unless otherwise specified, all text and images on this website are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. This does not include the source code of LibreOffice, which is licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPLv2). "LibreOffice" and "The Document Foundation" are registered trademarks of their corresponding registered owners or are in actual use as trademarks in one or more countries. Their respective logos and icons are also subject to international copyright laws. Use thereof is explained in our trademark policy.