RTF TO XML conversion receives more and more attention with each day. Originally designed to meet the challenges of large-scale electronic publishing, today XML plays an important role in exchanging online and offline data. When comparing RTF to XML, one can find many similarities: both formats are very flexible and platform-independent, thus relatively immune to changes in technologies.

There are several reasons why you may want to convert RTF to XML format. RTF to XML conversion is frequently met as an interim step of conversion of RTF to other formats. XML allows user to define his own tags while creating a document, and being opened in a text editor, appears relatively readable (like RTF). This provides very smooth and correct conversion of RTF to XML.

Although RTF is an 8-bit format, it is not limited to ASCII and can encode Unicode characters through certain sequences. Such strong similarity of RTF to XML allows lossless transferring of any written human language from one format to another.

All things considered, we can derive the full list of RTF to XML conversion features:

  • Conversion of RTF to XML format perfectly preserves all text formatting: font, size, color, style appearance (italic, bold, underlined, etc.), paragraph alignment, line spacing, etc.
  • Embedded pictures, backgrounds and other objects are transferred from RTF to XML as external (linked) files.
  • RTF to XML conversion is similar to some extent to RTF to HTML conversion: you can choose if you want the text to be split into pages at page breaks only, or at original page ends. Pagination will correspond to this selection.
  • All internal and external linked objects, links and hyperlinks, are converted from RTF to XML format precisely and without any changes.
  • Conversion of RTF to XML format is performed with accurate reproduction of all lists, columns, tables, tabs, etc.

The important feature of RTF to XML conversion is lack of requirement of any third-party software, such as Microsoft Word or XML-capable browsers (Firefox or IE).

Read about converting RTF to TXT, how to convert to SVG, or the way you can convert text to an image.