Microsoft KB Archive/89619

{|
 * width="100%"|

Windows 3.0 Help Compiler Difficulty Reading Word RTF

 * }

Q89619

-

The information in this article applies to:


 * Microsoft Word for Windows, versions 2.0, 2.0a, 2.0b, 2.0c
 * Microsoft Windows versions 3.0, 3.1

-

SUMMARY
The Windows Help Compiler version 3.0 does not support all of the formatting options that the current version of Microsoft Word for Windows (2.0b) or Microsoft Word for the Macintosh (5.0) are capable of creating. As a result, in some instances, Help will not accurately display compiled Rich Text Format (RTF) information. In other cases, the Help compiler may fail to compile the Word RTF file.

An updated Help Compiler is available that alleviates many of these problems. The updated Windows Help Compiler version 3.0 is included with the new Windows Help Compiler version 3.1 in Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) version 3.1.

For information about how to obtain the Windows 3.1 Resource Kit, please see the following article(s) in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

"Q124435 Windows 3.1 Resource Kit Files Available"

MORE INFORMATION
The following is a summary of Word formatting items not supported by the original Windows Help Compiler version 3.0:


 * Absolute-positioned objects (frames)
 * Annotations
 * Bookmarks
 * Document formatting properties
 * Document information
 * Headers and footers
 * Index entries
 * Style sheets
 * Symbol font
 * Table of contents entries
 * Tables

Some of these limitations are by design. Support for others (for example, bookmarks and annotations) has been added in the Windows Help Compiler version 3.1.

The updated version of the 3.0 Compiler and the new version 3.1 release do not support the syntax Microsoft Word 2.0 for Windows uses when exporting RTF containing special characters such as curly (smart) single or double quotation marks, bullets, and em/en dashes. When the compiled file is viewed in Help, these characters will not be included. The problem occurs because Word for Windows 2.0 stores special RTF control words for these characters that the Windows Help Compiler cannot process.

The workaround for the above problem is to replace the special RTF control words with the corresponding hexadecimal codes in the ANSI character set, as follows:

                                                 Hexadecimal Character                          RTF Control   Token -

Left curly single quotation mark   \lquote       \'91 Right curly single quotation mark  \rquote       \'92 Left curly double quotation mark   \ldblquote    \'93 Right curly double quotation mark  \rdblquote    \'94 Bullet character                   \bullet       \'95 En dash                            \endash       \'96 Em dash                            \emdash       \'97 Additional query words: 2.00a 2.00b textconv rtf winword macword win mac

Keywords : kbconversion

Issue type :

Technology :