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Opening RTF? Pages can’t do it

Padcatt

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I got a couple of forms from an attorney requiring my signature. Pages couldn’t open them. On my Mac, the venerable LibreOffice made short work out of this chore; I already had my signature file which I placed into the documents, then PDFd.

Thoughts? There is some kind of OpenOffice sort of reader; it is dog slow.
I’m trying to keep the number of apps on this iPad to the bone, and avoiding microsoft and adobe products like the plague.
 

twerppoet

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If it is just RTF, and not an actual .docx file, then Textilus Pro should work. Think of it as a lite word processor. There is no signature support, but you can print to a file, then add a signature in a PDF app.

Also, even if you don’t pay for Microsoft Word, you can still use it to read and print .docx files. If you can print, you can print it to a file, which is a PDF, which can be signed by any PDF app with that ability.

There used to be a slew of decent OpenOffice based apps, but the license holders decided the App Store was anathema to their open source licenses and banned iOS apps from using their code base. Many of the current Microsoft compatible apps actually run on remote servers, getting around the license issues at the cost of speed. I gave up and use the Microsoft apps when forced to deal with Microsoft documents.

BTW, if you’re using an iPad Mini or iPhone, the Microsoft apps work with all the basic features, for free. Microsoft bases their licensing requirements on screen sizes, for some odd reason.

There is also a new iPhone only Microsoft Office app that combines the three big apps (Word, Excel, Power Point) into one app. According to the description it is also free to use, with only some premium features reserved for Office 365 subscribers.

I know it’s painful to succumb to the Microsoft machine, but if you need to deal regularly with Word, Excel, and Power Point files, it’s not wortt the time to work around the issues. Not for me, anyway.

P.S. Thought it’s a fairly good word processor, I don’t use Textilus Pro for much; just the occasional RTF document that I want to edit natively. It will do much more.
 
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Padcatt

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Thank you, twerppoet...meaty response and I resonate with your comments about workaround vs using ms tools.

apple should either make nice with the open source tool license holders or make a thing for iOS to handle this sort of thing. Pro users deal with such tasks.
 

twerppoet

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Apple has no issues with the use of Open Source in apps. It’s the closed nature of the App Store that has some Open Source community incensed. To meet requirements of all the open source community Apple would have to give over some of the control it has the App Store. I don’t see that happening soon.

It’s mostly a difference in philosophies rather than practicalities. Much of the Open Source community has strong ideals on how software should be developed and shared. They won’t budge on those, and Apple wont’ budge on maintaining control of the App Store. Both have arguments for and against their positions.

Keep in mind that not all Open Source projects are opposed to Apple’s policies. By their nature Open Source licensing and organizations are diverse.
 

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