[NTLUG:Discuss] OpenOffice - winword formatting error issues -- Things you need to know about RTF

[terry]

Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> Douglas D. Darnold wrote:  
> 
>>I agree with sending an item as an RTF rich text format document, just
>>using the RTF Windows file suffix.  
> 
> 
> Export as RTF from non-MS Word for Windows to MS Word for Windows works
> best.  Word must read it byte-by-byte, which its RTF importer does.
> 
> But exporting RTF from MS Word for Windows does _not_ actually create
> RTF.  Most versions create "polluted" RTF with MS Word attributes.  The
> "file magic" is actually DOC, and not RTF.
> 
> In other words, Microsoft itself does _not_ even follow ANSI RTF
> standard revisions (e.g., 1.6, 1.7, etc...) for each new MS Word
> version.  Rather pathetic, but true.
> 
> Luckily Corel and OpenOffice.org/StarOffice recognize the "file magic"
> as DOC, and load it as such, even if the extension is RTF.
> 
> 
>>Windows will open it in Word or whatever the user has;
>>OOO/AbiWord/Applix will open it normally, etc.  In my experience,
>>unless it is extremely-heavily formatted, there's not much, if any,
>>format change if in RTF.  HTH.
> 
> 
> Because MS Word exports a DOC "file magic" even when you select RTF, it
> really makes *0* difference from the standpoint of using Corel or
> OOo/SO.
> 
> But going the other way, RTF _forces_ MS Word to do a byte-by-byte read,
> so it's _much_more_reliable_, I agree.  Unfortunately, all sorts of
> attributes are not supported at the same time.
> 
> 
I did a brief experiment, I copied a document from OO to floppy and 
saved it in three formats, Word 95, rtf, and html.  I changed the .html 
extension to .doc

I mounted the floppy on a MS Windows system and opened them in Word 97. 
The html document with .doc extension showed me all the markup, so that 
method did not work like Ralph described it to us, so I dono about that one.

The .rtf formatted document worked fine, but then I pretty much knew it 
would, I've used that method before, but rtf is a bit limited, there is 
formatting aviable in .doc that's not available in .rtf, so we'd be 
missing out in come cases by limiting ourselves to .rtf, (in _some_ 
cases, but not all cases, just depends on how fancy we need to make the 
documents).

The Word 95 format worked fine.  I made additions to the file in both 
Word 95 (and .rtf as well), under Word 97.  When saving to the Word 95 
format, I was asked if I wanted to save as Word 95 or 97 and so I saved 
in both formats and both opened just fine back here on OpenOffice.
Here's what the Word 97 dialogue box said:
====================================================================
The file cannon.doc is a Word Version 6.0 or 95 for Windows Document.
Do you want to update to Word 97 format?

To update it, click Yes
To save it in Word 6.0/95 format, click, No.
Some types of changes may be lost.
=====================================================================
There may be little or no truth to that last statement, I don't know for 
sure, but the documents [with additions] were read just fine when I 
re-opened them on my OpenOffice 1.1 running on it's native Linux platform.

  I tend to believe Linc Fessenden's workaround is probably best, Word 
95 format may be the most compatible, less confusing and easiest .doc 
format to work with.

-- 
but test everything; hold fast what is good,
1 Thessalonians 5:21