Atlantis' support for the various document formats

General comments and questions. Technical support.
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tralam
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Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2015 12:59 pm

Atlantis' support for the various document formats

Post by tralam »

Hello everyone,

I've been testing Atlantis off and on for a while now. At first, having used MS Office products and some other suites, I must admit I did not understand very well what Atlantis could do and focused more on limitations with regard to MS office suites, and less on what Atlantis does very well.

One thing that I've been noticing is that whether I save a document in .rtf, .doc, or .docx format, MS Word versions that support the document formats (from Word 2003 to 2013) render the Atlantis-saved documents perfectly (so far). Whenever I save a .docx with Word or another word processor (like LibreOffice Writer or SoftMaker Textmaker, etc.) and then open it with another version of Word or another word processor, this is not always the case. I know that this is, in case of Word, due to some features that only Word provides and that the other word processors (including Atlantis) don't have support for those features. I have no problem with that and understand the reasons for this. Moreover, I appreciate Atlantis' consistency and performance in the features it does provide and support (among which are many not provided by Word, for example).

I've been trying to find some more information about what it is Atlantis does support where it comes to .doc and .docx formats (particularly the latter) so that I have a better idea of what the limitations and benefits are of an Atlantis-saved .docx file. Is there some documentation of this type? Any comments, info, user experience, etc., would be appreciated.

Also, I would like to know more about the virtues of .rtf for it to be Atlantis' default format. In conjuction, I'd also like to ask if any of the supported major formats (.rtf, .doc, .docx) have any benefits over each other, or is there anything we need to know when saving to one of these formats (as in, will certain things not be supported in certain formats whereas they are in others, etc.)?

I read elsewhere on the forum that Atlantis' ebook export feature produces ebooks of high quality/good layout. If anyone has further experiences or information (or links) about this, I would also love to know about it.

My experience with Atlantis so far? I'm impressed. I love how small the program is, how fast is starts up and accomplishes tasks, and how meticulously and consistently it produces documents in the supported formats.

The last 10 years I've kind of been bouncing between word processors and it seems I'm always in the process of finding my primary word processor. I feel like Atlantis is candidate no. 1 right now, but I would like to know a bit more about it from both official documentation or comments from the Atlantis Team, as well as user experiences and thoughts. Thanks in advance for any comments and thoughts.
Robert
Posts: 1890
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2003 8:27 pm

Post by Robert »

Hi Tralam,
As you noticed yourself, it does not matter which format you save a document to in Atlantis if the document was created in Atlantis. The features that Atlantis supports are saved equally well to all the supported formats. Of course, the Atlantis proprietary encrypted COD files are a special case: only Atlantis can create and read them.

With documents created in other word processors, things are different. If these documents include features unsupported by Atlantis, you might very well have trouble editing them and resaving them properly in Atlantis, irrespective of which format you choose to use.

Now the binary DOC format. It has been abandoned by Microsoft. The official MS document format is now the DOCX format. It has plenty of advantages over the old proprietary DOC format. It is supposed to bring complete interoperability with other word processors. You’ll find details straight from the horses’s mouth at https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338205(v=office.12).aspx ("Introducing the Office (2007) Open XML File Formats").


The RTF format has a slight edge over the other formats though. Here is from Microsoft RTF File Format Summary:
Microsoft RTF (Rich Text Format) is a metafile standard developed by Microsoft Corporation to encode formatted text and graphics for interchange between applications. Normally, exporting a formatted file from one word processor to another requires that the file be converted from its original format to the format supported by the target application. This conversion almost never produces a target document that is an exact functional duplicate of the original. This is due both to the different features present in the word processor formats, and to limitations of the format converters. If a document is stored as an RTF file, however, and the reading application can also handle RTF files, no intermediate conversion is necessary and therefore no data is misinterpreted or lost.

RTF has excellent font-handling capabilities and bitmap storage features. RTF files contain only 7-bit ASCII characters, so the format can support documents formatted using the ANSI, MS-DOS, and Macintosh character sets. These features and others make the RTF format a good choice for use as a multi-platform interchange format.
Finally, Atlantis does export ebooks of the highest quality.
HTH.
Cheers,
Robert
tralam
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2015 12:59 pm

Post by tralam »

Thank you, Robert, for your helpful reply.

One of the things I understood about .docx is that it could also potentially be a bit more resistant against file corruption issues, when compared to .doc.
As you noticed yourself, it does not matter which format you save a document to in Atlantis if the document was created in Atlantis. The features that Atlantis supports are saved equally well to all the supported formats.
Yes, even when I open the Atlantis-saved files with MS Word this seems to be the case. In my case I have no use for the extra features that Word 2010 and 2013 offer, and it is much more important to me to have a word processor that does really well what it's supposed to do, and doesn't cause problems when its documents are open in other programs. Atlantis seems to do this.

Does the quote you posted about the .rtf format imply that any word processor does not have to convert the .rtf through its own conversion filters? I know from some other word processors like SoftMaker TextMaker and LibreOffice Writer that they are constantly bugfixing and updating their conversion filters for .docx and .doc, so is this different when it comes to .rtf?

Good to know about Atlantis' ebook export; this will certainly be a feature I'll be using.
Robert
Posts: 1890
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2003 8:27 pm

Post by Robert »

Yes, the DOCX format is more resistant against file corruption, and often the contents of DOCX corrupted files can be retrieved. This is not so with the DOC binary format. For detailed information about the advantages of the DOCX over the DOC format, have a look at Are there real advantages to docx over doc?

All word processors are supposed to be able to deal with the RTF format directly. Most other formats will require some kind of conversion.
tralam
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2015 12:59 pm

Post by tralam »

Great, thanks Robert.

I did have the thought that .rtf might then be slightly more susceptible to corruption also, as .doc would be. Especially since all included images would also be in binary format in the file, it makes the .rtf file big and thus theoretically more suspect to corruption? I'm re-saving a lot of old documents (originally in .doc format) and want to do this with Atlantis, and I'm thinking of saving them in several formats, like .rtf and .docx, but with Atlantis and then archive it all for safe-keeping. Hence I'd like a really consistent and secure word processor (but not Word, if I can prevent it) that is up to the task.

If any of the admin or team members can provide any more information or links, please do, as I would love to know a bit more about Atlantis and its supported formats and what the philosophy behind it is.
DaleDe
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Location: Grass Valley, CA, USA
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Post by DaleDe »

RTF is actually stored in an ASCII file and typically images are expanded to base64 text although there is a binary option as well for images so it is rather large compared to a full binary file although zipping it helps for storage purposes.

As to what Atlantis does not support it is mostly related to an inability to draw lines. There no real line support (except the ability to show something like a line in TOC). This means there is no table support, no horizontal line separators, etc. Images are supported but you can't wrap text around them so left/right floating support will be lost. (I would love to have this fixed for ePub support).

Anything that does not work will not be preserved in the file. By the way, metadata works fine.

Dale
Robert
Posts: 1890
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2003 8:27 pm

Post by Robert »

Hi,
The sample file “Banner creation.rtf” as available from the Atlantis site (Sample Documents & Templates) illustrates how to draw lines with tab stops (tabbed lines).

The file “Horizontal Line.rtf” attached below can be used as a Clip Library item. If you insert it into a document as an Atlantis Clip Library item, you’ll have a tabbed line that can be used to underline or overline text. Of course, the font type and size, the tab stop position can be adjusted as suitable.

The file “Run-In Head.docx” attached below also illustrates what can be done with a tabbed line using leader characters.

HTH.
Cheers,
Robert
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tralam
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Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2015 12:59 pm

Post by tralam »

Thanks, Dale.
RTF is actually stored in an ASCII file and typically images are expanded to base64 text although there is a binary option as well for images so it is rather large compared to a full binary file although zipping it helps for storage purposes.
I'll certainly use Zip or rather 7-Zip to archive the document collections. I wonder if/how the "super-compact" form of .rtf that the Atlantis site describes as using affects readability in Word or other word processors. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format) reads:
Most word processors are able to read and write some versions of RTF. There are several different revisions of RTF specification and portability of files will depend on what version of RTF is being used. RTF specifications were changed and published with major Microsoft Word and Office versions."
It also states, "New features in Word 2010 and later versions will not save properly to the RTF format" but I think that refers to the new features that arose with the development of .docx for Word 2010 and 2013.

I was also reading some things about .rtf and other formats in snippets of a book named "How to Build a Digital Library" on Google Books which I thought was informative: https://books.google.com/books?id=HiJNb ... &lpg=PA197
As to what Atlantis does not support it is mostly related to an inability to draw lines. There no real line support (except the ability to show something like a line in TOC). This means there is no table support, no horizontal line separators, etc. Images are supported but you can't wrap text around them so left/right floating support will be lost. (I would love to have this fixed for ePub support).
Anything that does not work will not be preserved in the file. By the way, metadata works fine.
I see, that is good to know, thanks for the info.
tralam
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2015 12:59 pm

Post by tralam »

Thanks, Robert, for those files and explanation, plus the link to the templates. I've been going through the site but overlooked that page.

Can I assume that Word and other procs will have no trouble reading such lines?
Robert
Posts: 1890
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2003 8:27 pm

Post by Robert »

Hi Tralam,
If you open “Banner creation.rtf” in MS Word 2007 for example, you’ll notice that only the simple tabbed lines are displayed correctly. The complex arrangements of lines that create actual banners do not display like they do in Atlantis. But most likely they would with a few adjustments to the tab stop values.
Cheers,
Robert
tralam
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2015 12:59 pm

Post by tralam »

If you open “Banner creation.rtf” in MS Word 2007 for example, you’ll notice that only the simple tabbed lines are displayed correctly. The complex arrangements of lines that create actual banners do not display like they do in Atlantis. But most likely they would with a few adjustments to the tab stop values.
Yes, I just opened it in Word 2007 and it's a bit mangled. Either way, I think I can do what I need to do with the documents with what Atlantis does support that is read well by other word processor. Of course, compatibility between different versions of Word isn't all that great either, so it's understandable.
Robert
Posts: 1890
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2003 8:27 pm

Post by Robert »

Hi,
The file “Horizontal Line_2.rtf” attached below can be used as a Clip Library item. If you insert it into a document as an Atlantis Clip Library item, you’ll draw a line across the page. Of course, the font type, size and color, the tab stop position, can all be adjusted as suitable.

Note that this file uses a different method from “Horizontal Line.rtf” (see further up in this thread). In “Horizontal Line_2.rtf”, the tab stop is not associated with leader characters. It is simply underlined.

HTH.
Cheers,
Robert
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tralam
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Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2015 12:59 pm

Post by tralam »

Thank you, Robert, I added it to my custom install of Atlantis.
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