Importing RTF?

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throwthag
Posts: 3
Joined: 2003-06-26 09:56:16

Importing RTF?

Post by throwthag »

I am trying the Nisus Writer Express beta 3. I thought it was supposed to be based around RTF. When I export a document in Appleworks in RTF format and then open it with Nisus Writer Express, it comes out all garbled and jumbled with the formatting tags, etc.

Is there any way around this?

Is there anyway to import files from Appleworks?

Thanks for any help.

-Sean
throwthag
Posts: 3
Joined: 2003-06-26 09:56:16

Post by throwthag »

Well, I have finally solved this problem. The solution is so simple that it surprises me that nobody from Nisus posted a response.

I just tried the new version 1.0 of Nisus Writer Express and tried to import an RTF file saved from AppleWorks. This is critical to me as I have a lot of old documents that I want to convert over. Anyway, I initially had the same problem. Nisus displays all the rtf encodings as document text in the new document.

Then it occurred to me that although I was saving my AppleWorks documents as RTF, they were not ending up with names that end in .rtf. So I renamed that document I was working with to end in .rtf and voila! It worked! Nisus imported it fine!

So, it appears that Nisus requires documents to have a .rtf ending in order for them to be imported properly.

This is a little unfortunate since it will provide confusion to a lot of users. This should be explained better to users. Also, isn't there a way to scan an RTF file and determine it is an RTF? If not, when opening a text file, the user could be asked if it is an RTF. Relying on the .rtf extension alone is a recipe for disaster and very un-mac-like.

That said, I am now very excited to give Nisus Writer Express a real try. And I do realize all the hard work the developers put into it. I am just trying to give constructive criticism so that other potential customers are not lost due to the same confusion I had.

-Sean
throwthag
Posts: 3
Joined: 2003-06-26 09:56:16

Post by throwthag »

One more follow up...

I just created an original Nisus Writer Express document and saved it as the preferred RTF document. Nisus automatically ended the document name with .rtf. I then reopened the document and it opened fine in Nisus.

Then I closed to document and in the finder I removed the .rtf extension. The document retained the Nisus icon.

I then opened it again in Nisus, and all the formatting text codes were again displayed in the document as document text and the actual formatting was lost.

I think this is an issue that needs to be addressed because it is very common for users to rename files in the finder and this could lead to a lot of confusion.

-Sean
charles
Posts: 481
Joined: 2002-11-26 11:40:35
Location: San Diego, CA
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Post by charles »

throwthag wrote:One more follow up...

I just created an original Nisus Writer Express document and saved it as the preferred RTF document. Nisus automatically ended the document name with .rtf. I then reopened the document and it opened fine in Nisus.

Then I closed to document and in the finder I removed the .rtf extension. The document retained the Nisus icon.

I then opened it again in Nisus, and all the formatting text codes were again displayed in the document as document text and the actual formatting was lost.

I think this is an issue that needs to be addressed because it is very common for users to rename files in the finder and this could lead to a lot of confusion.

-Sean
Nisus Writer will get a little smarter about determining the content type in our next release. Please send feedback (using the built-in Send Feedback) if you find this is still a problem.

-Charles
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