Saving as .rtf
Since I got a few questions on this based on my rant about MSword I thought I would explain in more detail, and set up a series of screenshots to explain the .rtf (Rich Text Format) issue and help those who haven’t heard about this before.
First let me explain the issue a little more clearly than my last post (if you know about file extensions just skip this and go down to the section labeled how-to). When you look at a document name it has two parts, the file name and the extension. The extension tells you what type of format a document is. So for example I was working on Chp. 2 of my dissertation today which is rather boringly named “Chp2”. When I look at the full file name thought it says “Chp2.mel”. The “mel” tells me (and the computer) what type of file this is. “mel” stands for Mellel (the word processor I use). This means the program needs to be able to read “Mellel” to open the document. Think of the extension as the “language” the document is written in, and the program has to speak the appropriate language or it can’t read the document correctly. (Like if I boarded a bus in Thailand, wouldn’t understand a thing.) Now if I am only ever going to use my computer and only want my document to be readable by me and my computer, no worries. The problem is if I send this “Chp2.mel” to my advisors (none of whom have Mellel) when they open the file it is likely to look like it was written in Thai (that’s even if they can open it at all).
Which brings me to MSWord. MSWord documents are saved under a .doc file. So if I had written the aforementioned article in MSWord it would read Chp2.doc. See Microsoft was clever, they titled the extension, .doc to make it seem natural, as if it is any old document, its just a “.doc” file. The problem is .doc is a very specific language, which in fact Microsoft owns. And companies and universities shell out billions to them to be able to have their computers talk in this language. This would not be a problem if it was a good format (language) or if everyone/every computer could read it. But they can’t.
So what’s the solution? Espranto. Or at least the Espranto of computer word processing. .rtf is a type of document that is designed to be read by all word processors. Microsoft Word, Mellel, Nissus Writer, Pages, etc., they can all read this format. (See the Espranto of Word Processing, although way more useful, William Shatner would be so proud.
This way if you save as a .rtf everyone with a computer should be able to read it, in their word processor of choice.
Now for the down side, .rtf doesn’t always preserve a documents formating. 98% of the time it will work, especially for things like school papers. Students just need to know how to get the document into .rtf. And most importantly to quick check to make sure that everything is okay.
.doc files are also much larger than .rtf files, and are far more likely to contain a virus.
(Here is my ideological aside so if you want skip it and go to the how-to.) If academics is about opening up knowledge, sharing ideas etc., than we should get in the process of “speaking“ in a way that is readable by the largest number, not in a language owned by a few. It is simply good pragmatic and ideological practice to share files in a .rtf form.
How-To
Okay so how to get this done. It is actually really simple. Most Word Processors will do this rather easily, MSWord included. Let’s take MSWord first. Select Save As from the File Menu (do this instead of just selecting save. Now at the bottom of the pop-up window under the line that says ”File Name“ is a line that says ”Save as type“. This is what you want. Select the arrow, and choose ”Rich Text Format (*.rtf). Done. (Sorry I don’t have a copy of MSWord but if someone wants to send me a screenshot I will put it up here). You can also save it as a .doc file just in case. Now the trick is, just to be sure, after you have saved the file, to close it and re-open it to make sure it looks fine. (Like I said 98% of the time it will be okay)
Some programs actually don’t let you select “save as“, you won’t see this option available. Instead you need to find the option that says ”export“ and export the text as an .rtf. The end result here is the same, it is just a matter of how a particular application is organized. (See screenshot below of Mellel’s export function.
And here is Abi Word (which looks similar to MSWord on the Mac)
As a general rule when students send me digital copies of their papers I require them to be in a .rtf form. This way they learn how to do it, I can be guaranteed to be able to read it, and everybody else can to, this is particularly important for workshopping papers etc.
July 20th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Being an academic–and a newbie Mac-user–I was intrigued by your praise for Mellel, and did a little snooping. But from my end, file compatiability issues are paramount and RTF just doesn’t solve them. Mellel is designed precisely for the kinds of elaborate, extended documents that RTF can’t easily handle. And besides that, it doesn’t even natively save in RTF. It requires an export. Seeing as how, in the course of my everyday life, I often share documents, open them on various computers (some public some private), I need those documents to be readable in a variety of word processors. And I don’t want to deal with the hassle of keeping two copies of all of my documents (one native for Mellel, one an exported RTf).
Having said that, I entirely agree with your ideological side. We should be speaking and writing in a format that is as widely accessible as is possible. But RTF is just not powerful enough for this. ODF, on the other hand, is. And had Mellel or Nisus had the foresight to switch to ODF, the word processing landscape would be quite different. But they didn’t. And it’s the reason I can’t use their programs.
From my perspective, I don’t see a viable alternative to word:
NeoOffice is still in Alpha, to say nothing of being horrifically slow
Openoffice is not much of a Mac application
Abiword has so many font rendering problems on the Mac as to make it unusable
Mellel and Nisus use formats that are far less universal and far less sharable than MSWord.
I’m still open (indeed eager) to being convinced that there is a viable alternative. So if I have missed something, please do make suggestions.
July 20th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
I agree it is a bit restrictive to have to save twice once as .mel and once as .rtf. But the export function actually does a better job of getting it accurately into a .rtf form than most programs. The issue of natively saving isn’t that different from say Word, Word isn’t natively saving either. (My biggest complaint is actually lack of a keyboard shortcut.) I also rather frequently import a Word document into Mellel, via the import function, and export it to Word via export, and this works 90% of the time. (And the time I save elsewhere in Mellel makes this more than worth it.)
Three things:
1. Mellel’s next release will build on XML format, which means this will solve all your problems as the code will be easily readable. For small documents whose format is unimportant I tend to keep them in .rtf, and near the end of the writing stage, style it up.
2. You can always use and compose in AbiWord and than go to Mellel for styling it up.
3. On Macs there is one last solution that is really nice, when I am done with a document, that is moving it to the printing stage, so I want to preserve how it looks across all computers you can select print, and rather than print save it as a .pdf. Pdf’s are large which is not the most convient but their layout is kept in tact. (This can be done on a PC it is just harder.)
Finally if Word works for you, keep using it. I however was really frustrated by how it worked, and what it did and wouldn’t let me do, and I think most people feel the same especially when they try out another format. But if you do stick with Word do the world a favor and always send docs as a .rtf. (And get your students to do it.)
August 21st, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Toke:
Thanks for the clarification.
September 23rd, 2006 at 7:58 pm
[...] Second, better yet just send your files as a .rtf. [...]
September 19th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
[...] Docx File Converter: If you are on a Mac and students have not learned to save as an .rtf this will allow you to convert files. [...]
September 22nd, 2007 at 1:10 pm
[...] 1. #1s need to distribute a copy of their essay via e-mail. To do this, send it as an attachment (I strongly recommend you send it as a .rtf document to avoid any problems with peers who are unable to open your document — for an explanation on how to to this see this). This means that you’re sending your paper to e-mail addresses of all the other As or Bs, etc. [...]