TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2003-02 > 1045270249


From: "James P. Colgate" <>
Subject: RE: [TMG] TMG 5 Individual Report - .doc and .wpd and .rtf
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 16:50:54 -0800 (PST)
In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20030214175215.024fab70@pop3.citlink.net>


I'm no expert either, but basically .rtf is a
universal format which supports some of the more
complex features and charaters used by most word
processing programs. It's a (big) step above Ascii.
The Rich Text Format supports things like footnotes,
fonts, bold, italics, reference fields, etc.

But .rtf is a (small) step below the MSWord and Word
Perfect formats -- these MSWord and Word Perfect files
have extra bits encoded in the files that only work in
the respective word processing program. For instance
the name of the person and name of the company
recorded in your computer are automatically saved in
all MSWord files. If you save a document in .rtf, the
file shouldn't retain this hidden info.

Usually, you can get the MSWord program to open a Word
Perfect file and vice versa -- what happens is that
MSWord will convert the .wpd file as it opens the
file. Sometimes there are compatability problems
between .wpd and .doc. For instance, sometimes when I
have a complicated MSWord document (i.e. with lots of
footnotes, reference fields, etc) and email it to
someone who then tries to open it in Word Perfect, it
won't open at the other end (this incompatability
issue could be related to the version of MSWord I have
on my computer, and the version of Word Perfect on the
other end). The solution for me has been for me to
use MSWord to save it as a Rich Text Format first, and
then email it off as a .rtf file.

James

--- "Paul E. Lawrence" <> wrote:
> I'm not an expert in this area but as far as tmg4 is
> concern when output is
> to Word or WordPerfect it is output in the native
> format of those programs.
> RTF is Rich Text Format which when output can be
> read by any program that
> reads RTF format, Word, WordPerfect, PageMaker,
> WordPad I think,
> etc....although some, like WordPerfect lately has
> had some problems with it.
>
> At 03:05 PM 2/14/2003 -0800, Cheri Casper wrote:
> >I
> >get it that ASCII/DOS results in the loss of
> stuffies like footnotes, etc.,
> >but what is the difference between Word output and
> RTF? Both have live
> >footnotes and indices, so what is different about
> the two formats?
>
> Paul E. Lawrence
>
>
> My Lawrence Genealogy web page has moved to the
> following URL:
>
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~lawrpaul/index.htm
>
> Includes allied surnames of Bumpass, Byerly,
> Daughtrey, Ford (Faure),
> Harper, Harr, Wilhite/Wilhoit. Also researching
> Burnett, Daniel, McMurry,
> Hardy, Hill, Bondurant, Stansbury, Towne, Kincaid,
> and Rose, and others.
>
> User of The Master Genealogist (TMG)
> http://www.whollygenes.com/index.htm
>
> Member of the Roots User Group of Arlington, VA:
> http://www.rootsusers.org/
>
>
> ==== TMG Mailing List ====
> The Wholly Genes FAQ page
>
<http://www.whollygenes.com/faq1/fom-serve/cache/1.html>;
> has information not only about TMG and how to obtain
> it, but helpful hints on using it.
>


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