RichText Formatting (RTF) vs HTML

[ssteinke]

I have done a bit of research on the topic and I was hoping to generate some discussion. My end-user requires an RTF style control for data entry. I have never implemented this type of control, but noticed that Access 2007 now uses HTML to achieve the same result. I don't think that waiting for the end-user to upgrade to 2007 on each workstation is an option.

1. Is RTF on the way out?
2. What is the benefit of HTML over RTF?
3. Is it possible to migrate to HTML from RTF or will all that data be lost if a future upgrade to HTML is necessary?
4. Has anyone used code to programmatically reduce the RTF Code to just plain text by removing the RTF tags?

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Is RTF on the way out?

Not as long as WordPad exists.

What is the benefit of HTML over RTF?

Greater variety of formatting readable by wide variety of reader programs

Is it possible to migrate to HTML from RTF or will all that data be lost if a future upgrade to HTML is necessary?

Yes to migration. You would lose data going HTML to RTF, but to the best of my memory (admittedly none too good on some days), the abilities of RTF are a true subset of the abilities of HTML, so no data loss would occur in a migration from RTF to HTML.

Has anyone used code to programmatically reduce the RTF Code to just plain text by removing the RTF tags?

Truth is, I so rarely have need to do that action that I always do it manually. Import it to WORD or WORDPAD. Save it as .TXT and click YES when the porgram asks if you really wanted to save the file in a way that would lose its formatting. I suppose you could emulate this action by opening a Word application object, opening the filethat was in RTF, and doing a SaveAs through ActiveX. You can specify conversion to text this way. Search the forum for using Word as an application under Access via VBA.