Rich Text Format

The Rich Text Format (often abbreviated RTF) is a proprietary with published specification developed by Microsoft Corporation from 1987 until 2008 for cross-platform document interchange with Microsoft products. Prior to 2008, Microsoft published updated specifications for RTF with major revisions of Microsoft Word and Office versions. Most word processors are able to read and write some versions of RTF. There are several different revisions of RTF specification; portability of files will depend on what version of RTF is being used. RTF should not be confused with enriched text or its predecessor Rich Text, or with IBM's RFT-DCA (Revisable Format Text-Document Content Architecture), as these are different specifications. Richard Brodie, Charles Simonyi, and David Luebbert, members of the Microsoft Word development team, developed the original RTF in the middle to late 1980s. The first RTF reader and writer shipped in 1987 as part of Microsoft Word 3.0 for Macintosh, which implemented the RTF version 1.0 specification. All subsequent releases of Microsoft Word for Macintosh, as well as all Windows versions, can read and write in RTF format. Microsoft maintains RTF. The final version was 1.9.1 in 2008, which implemented features of Office 2007. Microsoft has discontinued enhancements to the RTF specification, so features new to Word 2010 or a later version will not save properly to RTF. Microsoft anticipates no further updates to RTF, but has stated willingness to consider editorial and other non-substantive modifications of the RTF Specification during an associated ISO/IEC 29500 balloting period. RTF files were used to produce Windows Help files, though these have since been superseded by Microsoft Compiled HTML Help files. It is programmed using groups, a backslash, a control word and a delimiter. Groups are contained within curly braces ({}) and indicate which attributes should be applied to certain text. The backslash () introduces a control word, which is a specifically programmed command for RTF.