RTF Exporter
XML to Word
The RTF exporter actually is our high-quality RTF generation product known as downCast – but in a much improved version compared to downCast 1.8, both in features and performance (up to 300% faster!) . This module requires an appropriate downcast feature included in your license.
This module converts XML documents to Word or, more precisely, RTF documents. For specifying the layout, the module relies on a subset of Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 (CSS2) properties, amended by some proprietary properties where needed. Input XML documents must either be valid according to the upCast DTD (note that this is different from the upCast internal DTD!), or they can be any arbitrary XML language for which a transformation into the upCast DTD can (and needs to) be created.
The module converts XML documents valid according to the upCast DTD (and, in fact, any XML document whose DTD can be mapped into the upCast DTD) linked with an external stylesheet to Word and Rich Text Format (RTF) for editing and printing. Combine it with the RTF Importer, and you have a combo that offers a unique, streamlined, roundtrip-capable and integrated XML editing and publishing solution based – among others – on the open standards XML, XLink, XSLT and CSS2.
Style with structure
The conversion process implemented tries to use the structuring RTF constructs wherever possible like native tables, character and paragraph styles derived automatically from the stylesheet, native lists, headers, footers, textboxes, footnotes or annotations. This makes the result very different from a PDF document that places objects at specific positions on a canvas and is not editable by the end user. Instead, the exporter makes the resulting document highly accessible for editing without breaking the general layout. Inserting a list item in a numbered list with automatic renumbering or adding a column in a table is something which cannot easily (if at all) be done in output formats like PDF or XSL-FO by a regular user.
Advanced Features
The RTF exporter also supports more advanced features like rendering of OASIS Exchange Table Model tables or fields whose actual contents gets automatically calculated by Word. Additionally, it does not rely on the availability of Word template files for styles or font definitions, which makes it suitable for Word document generation on server platforms other than Windows. Two-byte encoding and Unicode support is built-in. Encodings for special fonts can be specified in a font property mapping table, as well as you can modify the default stylesheet used for the conversion.
Conversion Features
- creates fully editable Word documents, conforming to the RTF 1.7 specification (Word 97 and later)
- uses structuring RTF constructs wherever possible
- supports paragraph and character styles
- support for many CSS2 properties, incl. custom extensions
- offers powerful table translation, incl. nested tables, row/column spans, cell properties
- support for the Oasis Exchange Table Model (subset of CALS)
- processes footnotes, hyperlinks and references (XLink), fields, annotations, index entries, bookmarks, page headers and footers
- supports any combination of nested lists, tables and layout elements
- support for standard and user-defined document properties, document variables
- Unicode capable
- two-byte encoding support
- on-the-fly generation of style table, list table, color table
- intelligent font handling using extensible default properties for standard fonts and support for custom font encodings
Import Formats
- XML documents valid against upCast DTD (version 4 & 5); support for custom DTDs via pre-conversion step
- external style sheet based on CSS2 + inline style information
- external images (WMF, PNG, JPEG, GIF)