RTF opens with everything in italics

English
#1

Brand new to LibreOffice, v 7.4.7.2 (64 bit). I have set it up to emulate Word. I’m newly on Win 11, on a (new to me) Dell minitower. I write book indexes for a living, and one of my clients still requires delivery in RTF. I’m testing Libre to ensure I can make the jump to the new system. I use a standalone dedicated indexing program called Macrex (nothing to do with Mac, it stands for “Make an Index”). I use Mozilla browser and Thunderbird email.

  1. When I opened an existing RTF, it opened with everything in italics, including the text that was meant to be in italics. I need help to understand how I need to set up Libre to properly read RTFs.

  2. Previously my (recently passed away) computer tech of 30 years had Word set up to always question RTFs by opening the “Convert File” box with RTF selected (I don’t remember why this was done, but it was important), is it possible to set up Libre to do the same? Or if it seriously shouldn’t matter, then that’s ok too.

I’m strongly a creature of habit (muscle memory) and would prefer to have as few new things to learn as possible, but I certainly can and will learn whatever is necessary.

Thank you for your time, and for any info.

–Victoria

#2

Have you tried more than one file? Can you upload an affected file here for inspection? (It may be necessary to rename to name.rtf.odt before upload is possible here.)
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It may be a bug in the importer, but maybe the fonts used in the older document are not available on the new computer, but I doubt this for Win11.

#3

Thank you, Wanderer. I just tried a different file and same problem. Attached should be the rtf renamed as with .odt extension:

LICE10_Index.RTF.odt (346.7 KB)

#4

Unfortunately, when you change for another tool, you can’t use it just you did with the former one. Take the example from switching from nails to screws: would you drive the screws with your hammer? Or when switching from horse to car, would you ride your car?

Writer is not a drop-in replacement for Word. It is based on different founding principles. When you open alien format like those of M$O Word (.doc(x), .rtf and others), a conversion/translation must take place because there is no one-to-one correspondence between the formats.

So, whatever you do, even if the conversion succeeds in providing a compatible version of the file, you need to learn to avoid elementary mistakes. I recommend the Writer Guide for an introduction.

This file, once opened in Writer, shows an already sophisticated use of paragraph styles. Your custom styles are all descendants of built-in Caption which is set to italics (since it is intended to caption images, tables, illustrations, …). All your custom styles inherit this italic attribute.

The cause of this mishap is probably a conflict between built-in Text which is also intended for captioning text inserts but is used in your original RTF to designate “ordinary” text. Text seems to be the root for all your styles.

Consequently, the fix is easy once you’re familiar with hierarchical paragraph style structuring. In the Navigator side pane with Hierarchical view, you click on Text, drag it over Default Paragraph Style and drop it there. This detaches Text and all dependent styles from Caption to make it an independent tree (with Italic setting no longer inherited from Caption.

PS: you index contents can be created directly with Writer on the original document, probably with more formatting possibilities and expressiveness thanks to the various built-in paragraph styles of the alphabetical index engine. But, this requires you to learn the specific Writer feature and practice a bit to master it.

2 Likes
#5

tdf#157128

#6

I think the problem is that the paragraph styles inherit from “Text”. In LibreOffice there already exists a built-in Text paragraph style which inherits from Caption which has italics.
The simplest way I suppose would be to change the Text style to inherit from Default paragraph style; the occasional italics, “see also” survive this… As you are indexing, you won’t need to worry about text captions.

TextParagraphInheritance
TextParagraphInheritance1257×690 33.7 KB

[Edit]
Alternatively, you could drag with the mouse, the 3 styles; HeaderLtr, IndexTitle, Main, to Body Text so they inherit from that. That might cause problems at the client end, best just to have Text inherit from Default Paragraph style

#7

Yes, @EarnestAl , I was able to change the styles by changing the inherited style. Yes, the existing italics survived this. THANK YOU!
[edited to remove ref to drag n drop option] I will need to change the universal style in Libre and tbh I’m not even sure how to do that in Word, and so far that’s not being easy to figure out. Although I was a typographer on many mainframe systems pre-desktop, my needs have been very simple since I became an indexer.

I really appreciate your help in language I could understand. Thank you.

–Victoria

#8

@ajlittoz ,
I downloaded the Writer Guide, thank you for the link. I’m unable to understand your technical language about the styles. fyi, RTF is not a Word format, it is a universal format that was developed to be importable across platforms. Also fyi, I would never use a Word Processor to write an index-- I use a massively powerful dedicated indexing program that alphabetizes everything for me according to my specifications and formats my specifications into an RTF. I then do any last text massage and send it to the client as RTF or .Docx-- all formatting is specified by the client according to international indexing standards and the client does the typesetting. I am unable to submit in .odf (sp?), and followed a specific protocol for setting up Libre to look like Word and recognize my files-- it opens my .docx files easily and correctly and appears to accept my own style specs and style names just fine. It was just the RTF that had this styles problem. Again, thank you for the link.

#9

@mikekaganski ,
Thank you for this because I see now that when I open a docx file, Libre recognizes my own styles and doesn’t revert to Libre defaults, so it seems like Libre should also be able to recognize them in an RTF, but I don’t know anything about it.

#10

From Rich Text Format - Wikipedia

Microsoft maintains RTF. The final version was 1.9.1 in 2008, which implemented features of Office 2007. Microsoft has discontinued enhancements to the RTF specification, so features new to Word 2010 or a later version will not save properly to RTF

It is possible that this may have potential implications for you.

#11

@robleyd Thank you for this info. I have no control over the file formats required by my publisher clients. But I do know what I have to do to fix the problem and I greatly appreciate the help I have received here! Libre was the program loaded with the (used) tower I bought, and I’m a believer in open-source (including with gardening, e.g. the OSSI, Open Source Seed Initiative), despite not being very tech savvy, so I decided it was time to try. Again, many thanks.

#12

Which version of the RTF file format?

The RTF file format has a lot of different versions, and they never has been standardized.

#13

@ajlittoz After spending more time with the program I have found that this is indeed the easiest way to make the change in the styles. It’s also a way of making the change that is unlikely to undergo issues with future upgrades of Libre, which I already experienced when trying to use the extension “Template Changer” after the latest upgrade but it no longer worked the same way. Thank you for your help. (I have another question but I will start a new post as per the rules.)

#14

One last thing. Libre will not retain italics when it writes an RTF-- it gives a warning/error message saying that saving as RTF will affect formatting (MS Word also gives that warning but the formatting it won’t retain is much more complex, not simple italics). It will retain styles, but not italics added to text, which is ironic because RTF was developed with retention of italics between applications as a goal. So, the ultimate answer is that I cannot work with RTFs competently within Libre. Fortunately, the only client I still have that required RTF is now willing to take DOCX so I will continue to use Libre. But I thought I would share my final findings.

#15

I don’t get that. The only issue I see is if I use a Caption paragraph style, then if I open it in Word 2010 it is a different font. In Wordpad it opens fine.
SaveAsRTF.odt (30.0 KB)
SaveAsRTF.rtf.odt (4.7 KB) remove .odt

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