What are RTF files?
Microsoft: "The Rich Text Format (RTF) Specification provides a format for text and graphics interchange that can be used with different output devices, operating environments, and operating systems. RTF uses the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), PC-8, Macintosh, or IBM PC character set to control the representation and formatting of a document, both on the screen and in print. With the RTF Specification, documents created under different operating systems and with different software applications can be transferred between those operating systems and applications."
What this means in practice is that you can create a formatted document using text only processing with nothing required on the server but the ability to write text files. An RTF file can represent any document that can be produced in Word, this can include multiple fonts,tables, pictures, and drawing objects. However in this article we will be concentrating on producing simple documents that can be dynamically built from database information. In other words we won't be trying to use ASP to replace your copy of Word!
    Pros
  • Uses vanilla 7-bit ASCII data (actually this is a slight simplification but is close enough for our purposes).
  • Can be read by a variety of non-Microsoft applications (e.g. OpenOffice and WordPerfect).
  • Cannot contain macro viruses.
    Cons
  • Files can be large if graphics included.
  • Number of formatting options is very large and building complex reports is difficult.
Building an RTF file.
There are three ways to construct the files;
  1. Build each file from scratch.
  2. Build the document in Word with markers for data. Save the document as an RTF file and then use the file as a template.
  3. A combination of the above
Option 1 is the one to choose if you're a masochist.
Option 2 is the way to go if your have tabular reports.
Option 3 is what we will use in this article (and we might revisit option 2 at the end).