[CLUE-Tech] kword and rtf

[Matt Gushee]

On Tue, Jul 09, 2002 at 11:36:06PM -0600, charlie oriez wrote:
> I finally have gotten some folks weaned from sending me word docs as 
> attachments.

Way to go, Charlie!

> However, I was under the impression that rtf docs were cross 
> platform supported.  Today though I got some rtf docs which didnt open in 
> kword, but I was able to access them by forwarding them to a yahoo account.
> 
> Is this a personal problem or was I misinformed?  Using the Mandrake v8.2 
> release of linux with kword v1.1.1  Alternatives invited, though I dont want 
> to use Star Office now that they're charging.

Hah. Well, 'cross platform' isn't really the issue. The problem with RTF
is that it's controlled by Microsoft, and they can and do change the
specification when it suits them. Since RTF is text-based and the spec
is published (though it may be hard to find), it's much easier to adapt
to changes than in the case of MS Word, but it's still a moving target.
Also, have you checked whether KWord claims to support all features of
RTF?

If you like StarOffice but don't want to spend the money, why not try
OpenOffice? Then again, I wouldn't blame you for not liking StarOffice.
It reminds me of an old Kurt Vonnegut story about a radically
egalitarian society where everyone is made equal by artificially
handicapping anyone with superior abilities: people with good eyes had
to wear blurry glasses, fast runners had to wear weights to slow them
down ... you get the idea. 

StarOffice: slow down your Linux box to match Windows.

Oops. There I go, ranting again. Sorry.

Another idea is a program called Ted. It's a word processor that uses
RTF as its native file format. Haven't tried it myself, so I can't vouch
for it's quality. But you can find it at

  http://www.nllgg.nl/Ted/

-- 
Matt Gushee
Englewood, Colorado, USA
mgushee at havenrock.com
http://www.havenrock.com/