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RTF and RTFD Support

Marked can open Rich Text Format (.rtf) and RTFD (.rtfd) documents directly. Drag a file to Marked or use File Open… (⌘+O). The document is converted to Markdown for preview and export.

This works well with documents from Pages, TextEdit, Word, and other apps that save RTF or RTFD. Marked is still a preview tool: you edit in the original application and Marked updates when you save.

How conversion works

Marked converts RTF to HTML using the system text engine, then to Markdown. The converter:

  • Maps large paragraph font sizes to heading levels (relative to the most common body size in the document)
  • Preserves bold, italic, and links where possible
  • Extracts images from RTFD bundles and embedded attachments
  • Does not treat RTF filenames as image captions (see Images below)

The same conversion pipeline is used for Scrivener RTF compile and for RTF files included in other documents.

Live preview

When you save the RTF or RTFD file in another application, Marked detects the change and refreshes the preview automatically.

Images

RTF does not define a separate “caption” field in a way Cocoa exports to HTML. What looks like a caption in your layout is usually normal text in the next paragraph, and Marked keeps that as body text.

Embedded images and images inside RTFD bundles (for example pastedGraphic.png in a Pages export) are copied to a cache folder under ~/Library/Caches/Marked/Watchers/. Preview image paths point at those cached files until you export.

Marked does not use the image filename as alt text or a MultiMarkdown figure caption. You should not see pastedGraphic.png under the image unless you typed that text in the document.

Export and other features

After conversion, Marked treats the document like other compiled sources (similar to Scrivener and DOCX): export, statistics, and most preview features run against the generated Markdown stored in the Watchers cache.

Limitations

Conversion quality depends on the source application. In general:

  • Headings are inferred from font size, not from Word/Pages outline styles
  • Complex layout (multi-column tables used only for positioning, text boxes) may not map cleanly to Markdown
  • Equations in RTF are not supported in the preview (see MathJax for Markdown math)
  • Legacy .doc (binary Word) is not supported; save as DOCX or RTF first

For a one-off paste without saving a file, use Clipboard Preview instead.

Related topics

  • Working with DOCX – Word documents with change tracking and comments
  • Opening Files – drag and drop, Open Recent, clipboard
  • Exporting – Copy Rich Text and save RTFD (export), distinct from opening RTF as a source file

Next up: Link Validation ▶

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