Rich Text Format - Human Readability

Human Readability

Unlike most word processing formats, concise RTF code can be made human-readable. When an RTF file is opened in a text editor, without formatting or processing of formatting, the alphanumeric text is legible and the markup language (formatting) elements not too distracting or counter-intuitive. However, the RTF files produced by most programs, such as Microsoft Word (MS Word), will contain such a large number of control codes (for compatibility with older programs) that most files will easily be an order of magnitude larger than the raw text and very difficult to read. Formats such as MS Word's .doc are, in contrast, binary formats with only a few scraps of legible text.

Human-readable XML-based formats are becoming more common, but during RTF's initial release, its level of readability was rare among document formats.

RTF is a data format for expressing text documents. It is not really a markup language, as it was never meant for intuitive and easy typing. If some Unicode characters (e.g. letters with diacritics, or CJK characters) are used in an RTF document, they are difficult to read, as they appear only as escape codes, such as \'f1 for ñ or \u21563 for 吻. RTF also supports Microsoft OLE embedded objects and Macintosh Edition Manager subscriber objects (since RTF 1.0) which are not human-readable.