>I have found this to be true, and at times really annoying.  I have had reason to write a small RTF writer from Squeak (writes out text, unformatted, and tables - if anyone is interested,
> I'll post it), 
Please do.

>and I used the latest spec.  I believe the original output would have worked well with the latest Word product (whatever it is); it seemed to work well with WordPad.  Unfortunatley, when I brought the output into work to distribute, it wouldn't work with Office 2000 - what we were using there.  Word opened it, it just didn't display the tables nicely at all.
>
>Which brings up the point the RTF works well in a forward compatible setting, and can work (albeit poorly) in a backwards compatible setting.  What this would mean if a general RTF writer was incorporated into Squeak is that it would be ideal to be able to set what version of the format you are using.  Not really ideal.
>
>That said, I will continue to slowly work on the RTF writer I've started - as the need for more features shows up.  If someone else writes a more complete version, I'll use it instead, and probably contribute to it as needed (and as accepted).
>
>The need for a RTF reader, on the other hand, I see much less use for.  Transporting stuff from one image to another - well, there are better ways, as has been pointed out.  As for an RTF notepad - I wouldn't use one at all.  I'd rather use Word or OpenOffice.org.
I use Mac and Windows most days so for most simple documents, TextEdit and WordPad are just fine. So often I encounter machines that don't have either installed which is why RTF is valuable. 

Cheers,
Laurence
> 
>PDF would work ok for my purposes, except that there aren't many PDF editors out there that are in heavy use that I'm aware of.  So, if it is display only, that's fine, but not what I'm usually interested in.
>
>Postscript, on the other hand, I find almost useless personally.  I don't have a postscript printer at home, or afaik a postscript editor anywhere.  I'd rather something more in tune with Windows, the platform I'm most likely to use.


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