CAPTURE RTF

CAPTURE RTF

Support Command

The CAPTURE RTF command redirects Dataplot alphanumeric output from the screen to the specified file and formats it using Rich Text Format (RTF) syntax. The END OF CAPTURE command reverts alphanumeric output back to the screen.

RTF is a protocal developed by Microsoft for importing text into word processors. Specifically, it is supported by the Microsoft Word and Wordpad programs.

Dataplot generated in RTF format will contain a certain amount of formatting information in addition to the text. The CAPTURE RTF command is useful for generating Dataplot output in a format suitable for inclusion into publications and reports.

As of the 2013/12 version of Dataplot, most of the Analysis commands support RTF formatted output. The following are the Analysis commands that do not yet support RTF formatted output (these commands use an "asis" format).

ARMA
DDS
ORTHOGONAL DISTANCE FIT
PRE-FIT
RECIPE
SEASONAL LOWESS
SIMCOV
SMOOTH

CAPTURE RTF <file name>
where <file name> is the name of a file where alphanumeric output is written. If the file name does not contain a period, place a period (no spaces) at the end of the file name.

CAPTURE RTF SAMPLE.RTF
... DATAPLOT COMMANDS ....
END OF CAPTURE

RTF is a public protocol that other vendors are free to implement. Although a number of non-Microsoft vendors support the importing of RTF files, our experience is that most of them do not successfully display the Dataplot RTF files. The one exception is the ABIWORD program. We have only tested a limited set of word processors, so you are free to test this with software other than Word or Wordpad. However, we caution you that it may not be successful.

In summary, the Dataplot RTF files should display correctly in Microsoft Word. If your Dataplot RTF file does not display correctly in Microsoft Word, then feel free to report this to the Dataplot support team (alan.heckert@nist.gov) as a potential bug. If the Dataplot RTF file displays incorrectly in a non-Microsoft program, we will not investigate this as a potential Dataplot bug.

Note that the current default document format in Microsoft Word is an XML-based standard. In addition, there is an ISO standard for text documents (used by Open Office and Libre Office). These formats are not currently supported. As these formats probably have a longer future than RTF, we are considering adding one of these formats (translators are available for converting between these two formats, so we will only support one of them) as an alternative to RTF formatted output.

Dataplot does not currently generate graphics in RTF format. If you want to incorporate graphics into your RTF document, then generate them separately and then use the graphics file import capability in your word processor.

Dataplot is not a word processor. The RTF code generated is fairly basic. That is, Dataplot creates the basic table or list structure for the output. In addition, you can use the following commands
SET RTF FIXED FONT <font name>
SET RTF PROPORTIONAL FONT <font name>


For the fixed fonts, you can specify one of following (COURIER NEW is the default)

LUCINDA CONSOLE
COURIER NEW


For the proportional fonts, you can specify one of the following (TIMES NEW ROMAN is the default)

LUCINDA SANS
ARIAL
TIMES NEW ROMAN
BOOKMAN
GEORGIA
TAHOMA
VERDANA


If you want to make additional modifications to the appearance of the RTF output, you can do this once you import the RTF file into Word.

DATAPLOT has the following restrictions on the file name:
1. The file name should be a valid file name on the local operating system.

2. It must contain a period "." in the file name itself or as a trailing character. DATAPLOT strips off trailing periods on those systems where it is appropriate to do so. On systems where trailing periods can be a valid file name (e.g., Unix), DATAPLOT opens the file with the trailing period.

3. On systems where file names are case sensitive (i.e., Unix), the case is preserved as entered on the CAPTURE command.

4. The file name cannot contain more than 80 characters.

5. If the file name contains a space, then use the SET FILE NAME QUOTE command and enclose the file name in quotes. For example,
   SET FILE NAME QUOTE ON CAPTURE "junk temp.out"

The capture command can be toggled on and off (END OF CAPTURE redirects alphanumeric output to the screen). However, a new file name should be used each time since invoking a new CAPTURE command overwrites any existing file (END OF CAPTURE automatically closes the file).

Dataplot provides the following switches for controlling what output Datplot generates:
FEEDBACK <ON/OFF>
PRINT <ON/OFF>


The PRINT command controls most of the output generated by the Analysis category commands. Output from most other commands is controlled by the FEEDBACK command. The purpose of this distinction is to allow you to generate the output from commands such as FIT while suppressing most of the other output.

When generating RTF format output, a common choice is

PRINT ON
FEEDBACK OFF

None

None

CAPTURE	= Redirect alphanumeric output to a file.
CAPTURE HTML	= Redirect alphanumeric output to a file in HTML format.
CAPTURE LATEX	= Redirect alphanumeric output to a file in Latex format.
END OF CAPTURE	= Revert alphanumeric output back to the screen.

Presentation Output

1/2005

 
SKIP 25
READ STUTZ86.DAT ALITE JUNK2 JUNK3 JUNK4 JUNK5 LABID
.
CAPTURE RTF CONSMEAN.RTF
CONSENSUS MEANS ALITE LABID
END OF CAPTURE
    

You can download the generated RTF file.