Rating: 

To expand on the book itself, there are valuable supplements for download:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/rtfpg/

and click the Examples link.

(Parenthetically, I like topic-specific computer books, O'Reilly's Pocket Guides and Wrox's Handbooks).

The book's stated intent is to offer an introduction to Rich Text Format, and is a valuable preface to Microsoft's Rich Text Format (RTF) Specification. It does a good job of that, offering both analysis and caveats.

Now, if I don't offer a criticism or two this post will sound like it was done by the Marketing Department.

1. I'd like to see the Perl code in the addendums translated into C# or VB. That probably would make it more accessible to more users.

2. I wish the chapter on section breaks were fuller than it is. (Probably not a big deal for most programmers.)

I'd strongly recommend this book for any programmer needing to work with RTF files.