Why does RTF filesize increase?

[Patricia]

So try loading the doc into the Sony software.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Have you tried OpenOffice/SunOffice or MS Works instead? What about Google Docs? Although I don't think it will make much difference considering RTF is a standard.

It does make huge difference.
When formatting latest free e-books I have received by email from Tor I have tried many options. When you copy and paste document from browser into OpenOffice.org writer or into MSWord the result does not even open properly in Sony reader. So I have opened rtf files in plain text editor, and ... You would not believe the mess the editors do when writing rtf file.

I ended up creating an rtf file by hand - using macros (scripts) in a plain text editor -- Vim.

- open html file
- replace all <i> tags with \i
- replace all </i> tags with \i0 tag
- replace all <p something> tags with \par
- delete all the rest of html tags -- :%s/<[^>]*>//g
- insert file header "stolen" from a very simple word pad created file (on Unix and Linux I use Ted editor that produces THE cleanest rtf code I have seen to date)
- insert footer "stolen" from the file above
- rename *html to *rtf

File size is small fraction of the same book formated in word processor.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by 46137

OpenOffice is even more horrific than word.

I always save as rtf at the end. I just think I have to put up with it. Pain though

If you really want to know what is happening then look at the file in notepad. It is pure ascii and you can read it to figure out was is happening. Wordpad is by far the smallest. Word store metadata such as author and title and also has tracking rsid's scattered through the document and adds data about word as being the generator of the document, the printer size, paper size, formatting stuff and instantly makes it bigger. Each time you make a minor change and save it the resid's get added, the version gets bumped and other housekeeping things happen.

The best bet is to modify in word pad and then revisit once in word to add the metadata. (It is possible to just append the metadata at the bottom of the file from an older word rtf or design a simple script to add it back in. Just look it over and you will see how it is structured.

Dale

[HarryT]

What will REALLY bump up the size of an RTF file is adding pictures to it. RTF stores each pixel of the image encoded as ASCII characters, and adding a 100kb JPG image can easily increase the size of an RTF by 3-4 MB!