XHTMLtoRTF
XHTMLtoRTF is an XSLT 2.0 stylesheet for transforming XHTML into RTF.
Background
While I was job hunting I found that all of the job websites accepted different file formats when it came to uploading your CV. Most accepted .doc and RTF, whilst only some accepted my preferred format of XHTML. I have to confess that I did maintain parallel versions for a while; but got bored with that very quickly. So, I "grasped the nettle" and wrote an XSLT stylesheet to transform my master source XHTML file into RTF.
I thought that this is the sort of thing which might be useful to others so I've release it under the GNU GPL (version 3).
Download
How you can use it
All you need is your source (valid) XHTML file and an XSLT 2.0 processor. I use Saxon which is a Java XSLT processor. In which case you can get it to work by issuing a command like:
java -jar path/to/saxon9.jar
-xsl:path/to/XHTMLtoRTF.xsl -s:path/to/source.xhtml > path/to/result.rtf
Now that probably won't give you exactly what you want in terms of an output RTF document, the reason being that it gives me what I want! So you will need to customise the stylesheet a bit. Don't worry this is actually reasonably straight forward — read on!
Customising
Because this software is released under the GNU GPL (version 3) you can customise it!
In order to customise the stylesheet you need to know a little XSLT and a little bit of RTF.
XSLT resources
- This XSLT tutorial looks like quite a good place to start.
RTF resources
- The main this you need to know are some of the basic RTF control codes, here's a nice summary of RTF control codes.
- The complete list can be found in the RTF specification documentation.
- If you are really serious then RTF Pocket Guide looks like a good book (I've only read bits of the online preview — I'm waiting for it to become available via Safari).
Good luck and happy hacking!
