Microsoft KB Archive/75010

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Rich Text Format Subset Supported by Windows Help

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Q75010

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The information in this article applies to:


 * Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) versions 3.0, 3.1

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SUMMARY
The Windows Help Compiler version 3.0 does not support all of the formatting options that word processors, such as Microsoft Word for Windows or Microsoft Word for the Macintosh, are capable of creating. This document briefly lists many of these unsupported formats.

The complete specification of the Rich-Text Format (RTF) is included in the Microsoft Word for Windows Technical Reference (Microsoft Press).

MORE INFORMATION
Most of the time, unsupported format information is ignored by the Help Compiler without any warning messages.

The following items are not supported by Windows Help 3.0 in any form:

Absolute-positioned objects

Annotations

Bookmarks

Document formatting properties

Document information

Headers and footers

Index entries

Style sheets

Table of contents entries

Tables NOTE: In Windows Help version 3.1, Word for Windows tables are supported.

The following items are used for specified purposes in the Help Compiler:

Character Formatting Properties
The last group of RTF control words controls character formatting properties. A control word preceding plain text turns on the specified attribute. Some control words (indicated by an asterisk following the description) can be turned off by the control word followed by 0 (zero).

  Control Word   Meaning ---

\plain        Resets application's default character formatting properties

\b            Bold*

\i            Italic*

\strike       Strikethrough. Overloaded. Used to indicate a jump term (hot spot).

\scaps        Small capitals*

\v            Hidden text. Overloaded. Used to indicate the context string of the jump destination.

\f#           Font number. (Replace # with the appropriate number.)

\fs#          Font size in half-points (default is 24) (Replace #                  with the appropriate number).

\ul           Continuous underline*

\uldb         Double underline Overloaded. Used to indicate a jump term (hot spot). In order to read negative \expnd values created by Word for the Macintosh, Windows Help uses only the low-order 6 bits of the value read. Word for the Macintosh does not emit negative values for \expnd. Instead, it treats values from 57 to 63 as -7 to -1, respectively (the low-order 6 bits of 57 to 63 are the same as -7 to -1).

Special Characters
Special RTF characters are listed below. If a character is not recognized by the RTF reader, it is ignored and the text following it is considered plain text. The RTF specification is flexible enough to allow new characters to be added for interchange with other software.

  Control Word   Meaning ---

\'hh          A hexadecimal value, based on the specified character set (may be used to identify 8-bit values). An ASCII 9 will be accepted as a tab character. The code \ (line feed) or \ (carriage return) is treated as the control word \par. The backslashes must be included or RTF will ignore the control word. It is also desirable to insert a carriage-return/line- feed pair (without backslashes) at least every 255 characters for better text transmission over communication lines.

Additional query words: no32bit 3.00 3.10

Keywords : kb16bitonly

Issue type :

Technology : kbAudDeveloper kbWin3xSearch kbSDKSearch kbWinSDKSearch kbWinSDK300 kbWinSDK310