Article:		TextEdit's Default Format: RTF... Why?
Subject:		RTFD
Date:		2005-10-19 04:34:57
From:		z2
RTFD is not relatively new but is quite old, in fact about 15 years. It was supported in NeXTSTEP which is where much of MacOS X came from. Nearly all of NeXT documents that included graphics were in RTFD format. I haven't tried, but I bet you can open those NeXT files on current MacOS X without problems. And yes, the Edit.app on NeXT, predecessor of TextEdit.app, also had RTF as the default setting with the same capability of creating/opening RTFD.

Showing messages 1 through 4 of 4.

• RTFD
  2005-10-21 11:17:36  robert dodson [View]
  
  
  For some of us, something introduced 15 years ago is not quite old but pretty new.
  
  Rob

• RTFD
  2005-10-19 05:50:14  z2 [View]
  
  
  Just tried it and, yes, MacOS X can open all of NeXT RTFD files just fine, including transparent rendering of EPS (Encapsulated PostScript with no previews) graphics. Beautiful!
  
  This wasn't possible when MacOS X 1.0 came out, as it did not have EPS converter then. Congrats and thanks to NeXT, ...um, Apple developers for making this possible without fanfare.
  
  
• RTFD
  2005-11-15 05:34:20  leeg [View]
  
  
  I finally ditched all my NeXT Mail mailboxes around 10.2, but until that point Apple Mail could read (but not compose) NeXT's rich text mail format (a tar'ed rtfd sent as a MIME part) too. However, as for why TextEdit's default format is RTF (when it should obviously be plain text), I have no idea.
• RTFD
  2005-10-19 05:55:55  Giles Turnbull | [View]
  
  
  Heh, a happy result.