After my error earlier, Iget an eye on RTFand Xojo 2019r1.1.
Of course, I loaded rtf files created with TextEdit (Apple, rtf) to find limage is translated to l\\u146 image (limage), some vowels with diacriticals disappears (<é> encoded as <\u233 >), etc.
So, I checked within wikipedia (english), but RTF does not seems to be deprecated from Microsoft, but not updated since 2008 (that is 11 years ago)
My question is double: what is the RTF status in both Microsoft AND Xojo. In short, deprecated by Microsoft and no more supported by Xojo (will never be updated no bug removal will be done) is an answer.
In short: do not waste your time with that feature.
the entire RTF spec was NEVER supported by Xojo
it was a custom subset of RTF that made it possible to use styled text in Xojo, save that to a file and reload that
no more
IF you want more complete support of RTF you probably need to use FTC
You may be able to use declares on macOS to expose more of the underlying native text control which may permit better RTF support
But still this is a text encoding issue and not just needing more access to the underlying RTF features isnt it? It looks like your rtf file is appropriately escaping those codes, but that Xojo isnt reading them back in or creating them properly?
How are you loading the RTF files? If you properly define the encoding to UTF8 and then assign them to the text field does that make it work? If not, then I think a feedback report is appropriate since Xojo has worked so hard to support text encoding throughout the rest of the framework. It really shouldnt be that big a deal to parse those out properly and to generate them properly.
rtf is purely ascii - its NOT a text encoding
but it encodes thing much like html does so the rtf readers have to implement whatever decoding or they just do nothing with it which appears as incorrect text
RTF is ubiquitous. Even though the last format specification is very old, all today’s office applications offer an RTF export. Why? Because the RTF format can be opened cross-platform without any extra Office software. Like the TXT format, it has became a standard for the operating system. Word, LibreOffice, Apple Pages, Nisus Writer, Mellel, Bean and Co. - all read and write RTF files, whereby Microsoft Word of course offers the most comprehensive RTF support.
You ask what formats are used today? The answer is DOCX and ODT. DOCX is the Microsoft format and ODT is used by Libre/OpenOffice etc… It is a zip folder with various XML, text and optional media files (images). Both formats support all RTF properties.
If you are using RTF files, make sure that pretty much any user of any operating system can open the file, unlike DOCX and ODT.
RTF (maybe excepted in Microsoft applications ?) are not the default file type, but an Import / Export feature.
I never saw an ODT file (anywhere), but I saw DOCX files (probably, most files I saw were xls)
I may stop creating software as this start to be boring for a single, lonesome cowboy developer or stay with the RTF skeleton application I already have
BTW: did you read [quote=448979:@Emile Schwarz] file (the one I tried with accentuated vowels) is not even displayed ! The TextArea is blank (hold nothing).[/quote] ?
(tested with LibreOffice 6.2.5.2).
At last, yes, I know Xojo have so many works in his plate and so few time
The RTF standard is NOT deprecated and much far away to be dead. Most of the time you will use RTF 1.0 from 1987 and 1.5 from 1997 to include 16-bit Unicode and PNG or JPEG
The later updates to the standad where just to add compatibility with new features of WORD. So, the only “downside” for not being updated anymore is that new features in word 2010 or later cant be saved in a RTF file.
So, in Microsoft and the rest of the world, the 3 decades old format is still in use and it is not going anywhere in the near future.
As for Xojo, well, if they havent provide support in those 3 decades…
