Sameh Elsharkawy 

I think you'll need to provide more detail than this.  I created a small sample, since you didn't give us one, that looks like this:

The resultant export looks like this:

fishing_default.rtf

Can you tell me what's wrong with it and then I'll have some idea f what to do next... maybe!  I say maybe because theoptions available to me are probably to customise the RTF output and this is tricky.  But let's start with something that helps us understand the problem and then work with it.

Please DO NOT just provide huge complex files for us to work with.  Just create something with a couple of terms and explain the problem clearly.  Pretend we can't speak Arabic... which we can't!

fishing_default-By Sameh-Ideal Formatting.rtf

fishing_default-By Sameh-Ideal Formatting.rtf

 Sameh Elsharkawy 

Sameh Elsharkawy said:

so need to have control on what the final output RTF file looks like and what should be LTRed and what should be RTLed properly.

You do have this control.  But you have to edit the default definition to do it.  Unfortunately we have zero documentation around how to do this and I have not been able to find anyone in the organisation who knows how to work with this old RTF coding to achieve what you need.

Sameh Elsharkawy said:

We should also control if we need the field names appear in the final RTF export or not!

You also have this... which is actually the easy bit as you decide whether or not they are included or not with a simple checkbox!

I've spent an hour or so trying to figure out how to do this and in the time I'm prepared to spend on this for now I managed to achieve this:

Not perfect... but frustratingly close!  I say frustratingly because I'm not sure specifically which changes I made caused this yet and I also can't seem to get the English source term to be left aligned.  But think some more time trying to understand how this all works properly bay help get there.  And then it all needs documenting for others!

I actually have a copy of the old MultiTerm books but this export or the use of RTF codes isn't addressed at all.  It really is a little used feature, although I reckon it could be more heavily used if people knew how to use it!

These are the basic steps you need to take:

1. Duplicate the default "Word Dictionary export definition"
2. Edit the duplicate as this exposes the fields you can change
3. Step 5 of 8 seems to be the relevant part where you can customise the details between the header and footer:
   

In this last screenshot I annotated a couple of places:

1. click on each part of the definition you want in the report and this changes the view for 2.
2. you can edit these RTF codes to achieve what you need

This one shows the default plus some fiddling from me.  An explanation of the codes as it may help you would be:

{\qr\par}
%20{\cs19\fs16\f5{\i%20\par}
:%20{\cs19\fs16\f5{\i%20\par}}}

MultiTerm seems to mix some URL-encoded characters. In a URL, characters like spaces and special characters are often encoded to ensure that they can be properly transmitted over the internet. The sequence %20 represents a space character when URL-encoded.  RTF doesn't really need this, but MultiTerm seems to.  So ignoring the %20 here's an explanation of the rest:

• {\qr\par} - This creates a new group that is right-aligned (\qr) and then inserts a new paragraph (\par).

• \cs19 - This applies character style number 19 to the enclosed text. Character styles in RTF are defined in the stylesheet group of the document.

• \fs16 - This sets the font size to 16 half-points, which would be equivalent to 8 points.

• \f5 - This selects font number 5 from the font table defined elsewhere in the document.

• {\i \par} - This creates a new group with italic text (\i) and then inserts a new paragraph (\par).

• : - This appears to be a literal colon character.

Please note that RTF is a rich text format that includes lots of features for formatting text, and it can be difficult to understand what a particular piece of RTF code does without seeing the whole document, because some parts of the code might refer to definitions and declarations made elsewhere in the document. For example, this code refers to a font and a character style that would be defined elsewhere in the document.  That document is most likely the stylesheet referred to above and this can be found if you save the export definition.  That will get you an xdx file containing the RTF and the xml stylesheet.

In theory you could also edit the xdx and then "load" it into Multiterm to use as a new export definition.  But I think that is probably starting to become very technical and is a job probably best left to a developer, or a much more technical person than I am!

But I have some belief that what you would like to achieve is all possible in Step 5 of 8 of the wizard.  To give you a head start here's were I got to this evening: 

Sameh Test.zip

You can load that and see if it works in te same way as my screenshot.  Then you have a headstart and with some time and effort may be able to refine it.  I'll come back to it when I get some more time.  But I think this should help you a bit for now.  The main point being everything you want is in your own hands!

Hi Paul, Thanks a lot for your help, I do appreciate it and trust me it is for a very valid and useful end.

It seems to be working, but the only thing is the RTL of the Arabic text as that does not seem to be working at all. I have been experimenting since morning and I tried

{\pard\qr\rtl\rtlch

{\pard\qr\rtl

but it did not work still. Maybe if one of your developers know the trick, that would be great.

Please let me know if you come up with something.

Thanks a million.

Sameh

Sameh Elsharkawy 

Sameh Elsharkawy said:

Maybe if one of your developers know the trick, that would be great.

Pretty unlikely!  I've been all around the houses now even speaking to some very long term Trados devs.  Nobody knows anything about writing with RTF these days and more to the point writing RTF within the context of MultiTerm.  It really is very old, and also little used so didn't get anything like the attention it should have had over the years.

I think the proper solution is more likely to be something we do with Language Cloud Terminology in the future if there is a demand for it.  In the meantime it's on us... by us I mean you, me and anyone else who is interested.

I don't know if you've tried it yet, but you might glean some knowledge by correcting your output in Word and then looking at the RTF codes that it uses to achieve it?  That will be my next step when I get some time.