Kevin Lipe, describing a problem he ran into during NaNoWriMo:
Here’s the deal: I’ve been using this as my main word processor for a year and a half now, for everything from school papers to poems to a novel. It hasn’t let me down yet in terms of doing what I ask of it—that is, up until now. I’ve started using a MacBook (Mid-2007) as my main writing machine instead of my MacBook Pro (better keyboard) and I also have a Thinkpad X60 tablet with the gargantuan 8-cell, six-hour battery that I love to write on. As a result, I’m moving files around from machine to machine and also from operating system to operating system, and RTF is hideously inconsistent between programs, and especially between operating systems. Something’s always missing, whether it’s page numbers, the footer, whatever.
[…]
This is frustrating because so many OS X word processors live and breathe RTF. In a world where the standard format for document interchange (besides PDF, which I’ll discuss when I get to Pagehand) is Microsoft’s binary, crufty pre-2007 Word format, RTF would appear to be the last, best hope for having some sort of standard method of interchanging documents without relying on Microsoft’s crap. The shame is that no OS X word processor I’ve tested yet has flawlessly opened an RTF document created by another word processor, and none of them can produce an RTF file that opens identically under OpenOffice. I’m not holding my breath for this to ever get worked out, and so I’m going to pretend that these problems don’t affect my judgement of all of these word processors, but I sure wish they had everything worked out.
Lipe’s problem highlights an inherent weakness with open formats. Since most open formats don’t have any specific developer in charge of their development, there is no one to say what can and can’t be done with it. Microsoft’s formats — as goofy as they are sometimes — are strong because Microsoft controls them.