Home > Rich Text Format
RTF (usually referred to as such) stands for Rich Text Format, a document file format developed at least since 1987 by Microsoft for cross-platform document interchange that most text processing programs are able to read and write. RTF uses the ANSI, PC-8, Macintosh, or IBM® PC character set to control the representation and formatting of a document, both on the screen and in print. With the RTF Specification, documents created under different operating systems and with different software applications can be transferred between those operating systems and applications. The simple example of an RTF file:-
{\rtf
Hello!\par
This is some {\b bold} text.\par
}
will show as:
-
Hello!
This is some bold text.
A backslash \ starts a control code. The \par control code indicates a new line, and \b switches to a bold typeface. Braces {} define a group; the example uses a group to limit the scope of the \b control code. Everything else will be treated as clear text, i.e., the text to be formatted. A valid RTF document is a group starting with the \rtf control code.
This syntax is similar to that of TeX. By using the control codes in file, a document with specific font, fontsize, or color of the texts, or tables with different border styles can be easily created, explaining its popularity among programmers.
The RTF format is the default rich text format for Mac OS X's default editor TextEdit and Microsoft Windows' default editor WordPad.
External links
Computer file formats
RTF
