What Is Rich Text Format?
If you've ever worked with a simple .TXT text document, you've no doubt noticed one thing -- they're dull. The same fonts, no text formatting, no custom margins. But writing up a document with a snazzy font, customized indenting and maybe some bold here and there might result in a document not everyone can view with their word processing program. Enter Rich Text Format, a universal format designed to handle all the intricacies of rich text without the hassle of file conversion.
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Rich Text
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Rich text is used to describe text that isn't dull as dishwater. Plain text typically employs a single font like Courier or Courier New; has no bold, italics or underlines; and is as about as aesthetically exciting as a cardboard box. Rich text supports bolds, underlines, italics, colors, different fonts and in some cases even pictures. Most document formats supporting rich text are native only to the program that created them, and specific support or file conversion might be necessary to view them on other word processors.
Rich Text Format
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The Rich Text Format or .RTF file was standardized by Microsoft as a means to create documents with rich text that could be viewed on virtually any word processor. The RTF format allows most text formatting options like bolds, colors and different fonts using a generic system of formatting and generating the file.
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Universal Format
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Because the RTF format is designed to be generic, it's compatible with almost any operating system. It doesn't matter if you run Windows, Mac or Linux. As long as your text editing program supports the format, you're covered. Given the number of programs that can process RTF formatted documents, RTF is essentially a universal format that can be ideal if you have to transfer documents between two different computer systems with different word processing programs.
Compatible Programs
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The RTF format is so widespread that almost every word processing program is capable of opening, creating and editing RTF formatted documents. The only exceptions are typically text editing programs that don't support formatted text in the first place. Some examples of compatible editors on Windows include Microsoft WordPad, Microsoft Word 2010, Corel WordPerfect Office X5 and Nuance OmniPage 18. Some examples of compatible editors for Mac include Apple TextEdit, Apple Pages, Microsoft Word 2011, and Nuance OmniPage Pro X.
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References
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