xmlhack: Using XSLT to generate RTF

Eric van der Vlist announced an RTFOutputHandler for the XT XSLT processor which allows XT to produce Rich Text Format (RTF) output.

Developers who want to create RTF can build a style sheet which produces an XML version of the RTF vocabulary, and then specify this output method to have it serialized as RTF rather than XML.

Although the serialization approach is quite simple, it has substantial implications:

"I think that its very simplicity should make it a powerful and flexible tool, especially since it comes (ala XSL-FO) after a XSLT transformation.... If the XML serialization of RTF happens to be a good idea, this output handler could be very easily turned into a SAX writer and a RTF parser could be developed to parse RTF documents into XML."

The use of a serialization method still requires developers to have an understanding of RTF to create documents:

"The good news is that you don't need to fight with the text output method any longer to generate RTF, the bad news is that you still need to know RTF to use this output method!"

This initial release also has some signficant whitespace and Unicode limitations.

Eric van der Vlist is an editor of xmlhack.