Rich Text Format Directory

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Rich Text Format Directory
File extension:	.rtfd
Uniform Type Identifier:	com.apple.rtfd
Type of format:	Word processing document
Container for:	RTF and media files

Rich Text Format Directory, also known as RTFD (due to its extension), is the primary document format of TextEdit, an application native to NeXTSTEP and Mac OS X which has also been ported to other versions of Unix. The file format is based on the Rich Text Format, but can also include "attachments" such as images. An RTFD file is a bundle, a folder containing files. It contains a Rich Text file called TXT.rtf that contains Rich Text formatting commands, as well as commands for including images or other attachments contained within the bundle. Images used in the document are stored in the bundle in their native formats.

In contrast to RTF, RTFD is not portable to Windows, for the simple reason that hardly any Windows applications support the format.

One big advantage with RTFD is that it supports scalable high quality image formats like PDF, so an RTFD file can print with no information loss at large paper sizes. RTF does support a number of scalable image meta file formats, but they are not as versatile as PDF.[1]