What is rtftoweb?

rtftoweb is an extension of Chris Hector's very excellent rtftohtml (see section What is rtftohtml), which converts RTF-Documents to HTML, which in turn is used within the World Wide Web Project. rtftohtml converts a linear RTF-Document to an also linear HTML-Document, with little support for hypertext and without any structuring (well, since version 2.7 this isn't quite true anymore, but that table of contents doesn't turn your documents into hypertext).

This is where rtftoweb comes in.

rtftoweb converts a linear RTF-Document (that may contain cross references, index entries and footnotes) into a fully hypertexted set of HTML-Documents.

This document, that you are reading right now, is an example of what you can expect from using an rtftohtml which has been extended by rtftoweb, since it was created from an RTF-source by rtftohtml 2.7.5 with applied rtftoweb 1.6 patches, with the command

	rtftohtml -h1 -c -x guide.rtf

The rtftoweb-patch adds the following features to rtftohtml:

• splitting of the document:
  rtftoweb uses the headlines to determine where to split (the splitting depth is adjustable by the user, see also section Headings)
• fully customizable navigation panels on top and bottom of each page (see sections Headings and Navigation panel)
• active Cross references to headings, mail addresses and URLs
• automatic generation of an active table of contents
• automatic generation of an active Index
• support for a few of Netscape's HTML extension, such as the <center> tag and background images (see also section Navigation panel)
• and of course: this Guide To Using rtftohtml and rtftoweb

For information about where to get and how to install rtftoweb, see section Installing rtftohtml and rtftoweb.

New in version 1.6

When I released rtftoweb 1.5, I thought it would be the last version of rtftoweb since I agreed with Chris Hector, the author of the original rtftohtml, that rtftoweb should be integrated into rtftohtml. That was at the end of 1994, but no new version of rtftohtml was released since then.

Chris told me that he has currently (and during the last monts) too many other things to do, and that he will not be able to continue the development of rtftohtml within the next few months. Because of this, and because I keep getting bug reports and suggestions from rtftoweb users I decided to release another (intermediate) version of rtftoweb.

Among the new features are:

• rtftoweb now creates clean HTML (no more "Bad HTML" complaints by Arena!)
• the <center>-tag of Netscape is supported
• the layout of the Navigation panel now is fully customizable
• Netscape users can specify additional layout features
• empty headings are ignored now
• If email addresses and URIs are colored red in the RTF file, an HTML hyperlink will automatically be generated.
• And of course: This guide that you are reading right now.

This version also fixes some bugs of earlier versions, with the more important being:

• If a heading is longer then a certain amount of characters, which can happen if an image has been formatted by mistake with a heading paragraph style, it is ignored.
• Auto-numbered headings are now fully supported.
• Internal Cross references are now correctly resolved across file boundaries.

For a detailed description of all changes have a look at the file CHANGES.