Change history

Change history of RTFC version 10

Version

Changes

10.04

July 2026

New:

The keyboard shortcuts <AltGr+R> for the Hypertext Wizard and <AltGr+W> for Microsoft Word are now handled directly by RTFC. As a result, the programs start faster on current Windows versions. To switch over from the old Windows shortcuts to the new method, a restart of your computer is required after the update.

New:

The built-in printer driver now also supports printers via TCP/IP. Network printers therefore no longer require a Windows printer driver: RTFC controls the entire printing process itself and works independently of the Windows printing system.
The printer's network address (IP address or host name) can be entered via the "Network" button in the "Printer Setup" dialog. The connection is checked immediately, so you get instant feedback on whether the entry is correct.
With this built-in support for network printers, we are responding to Microsoft's Modern Printing Initiative, which will lead to the phasing-out of classic printer drivers on Windows 11 and later in the medium term.

New:

Automatic detection of Windows printer drivers is now optional and can be disabled if needed. The corresponding setting can be found in the context menu of the printer selection drop-down list.

Improvement:

Automatic detection of Braille printers has been revised. Spaces and hyphens in printer names are now handled consistently. In addition, older models and chipsets are now better supported for printers with a virtual COM port.

Improvement:

The analysis of audio files for automatic phrase detection now covers nearly all variants of WAV and MP3 files. The analysis in the "Source Files" dialog step of the Hypertext Wizard now also displays audio parameters such as channels, sample rate, and bit rate.

Improvement:

The response speed of the Document Reader and the built-in screen reader has been increased. Both voice synchronization and processing of the pronunciation dictionary are now faster.

Improvement:

The progress display during conversion now responds consistently and smoothly. The marquee shown before and after the actual conversion process is now animated reliably.

Improvement:

Processing of multiple documents at the same time has been optimized to avoid overloading the system. This is especially helpful when you select several files in File Explorer and convert them via the context menu.

Bug fix:

The keyboard echo during Braille input with the RTFC Braille keyboard has been revised. Previously, the keyboard could stop responding if speech output was too slow.

10.03

April 2026

New:

The use of placeholders for designing headers and footers with Braille tags has been extended. The placeholder "%w" (for blank space) can now be specified multiple times, for example to right-align page numbers or to center text. The placeholders for page numbers "%b", "%n", and "%p" can now be joined pairwise with characters such as ".", ":", "/", or "-". This makes it possible, for example, to render page numbers as lowered digits in 6-dot Braille.

New:

If the digits "0" through "9" are defined with a leading number sign (dots 3, 4, 5, 6) in the loadable Braille table for computer Braille, numbers that include periods and commas are now each announced with a single number sign after conversion.

New:

When installing or uninstalling RTFC, an installation log named RtfcInst.log is now created in the temporary folder. It records the progress of the installation and contains additional information about the system environment. In the event of an installation error, the messages it records help with troubleshooting.

New:

The context menu for the "Add File" button in the Hypertext Wizard now also lists the most recently used documents from Windows, not just the most recently converted documents from RTFC.

Improvement:

Back-translation of Italian Braille was optimized with regard to special characters such as currency symbols, accented letters, brackets, and mathematical expressions, as well as mixed capitalization.

Improvement:

Support for the Braillo 300 and Braillo 300 S2 printers was extended, so that page margins can now be set from within RTFC via the paper format dialog. In addition, files with differing page lengths can now be printed without having to manually adjust the printer configuration to the changed number of lines per page.

Improvement:

If a BRL file ends with line or page breaks, these are no longer printed out. This prevents unnecessary blank pages from being produced at the end of files that were not created with RTFC.

Improvement:

In speech synthesis, dates combined with weekday names, as well as leading zeros in numbers, are now read out correctly.

Improvement:

In the directory selection dialog in Program Options, "Folders" tab, the most recently used directory is now always preselected.

Improvement:

The progress dialog can now be navigated with the Tab key. This makes the individual fields accessible with a screen reader as well.

Bug fix:

If a file name contained foreign-language characters that were not included in the current Windows locale, the file could not be opened and converted.

Bug fix:

The loadable Braille table for computer Braille is now also applied to headers and footers.

Bug fix:

When foreign languages were defined via font classes, the language switch was not detected if a paragraph contained text in a foreign language followed by text in the main language. The implementation only handled the reverse order.

Bug fix:

When specifying a contraction profile via Braille tags, certain exceptions for contractions were not taken into account.

Bug fix:

When generating a word list with character-frequency counts, all characters of the ANSI character set are again taken into account, as in earlier versions.

Bug fix:

Booklet printing was faulty when a BRL file was saved in Unicode.

10.02

July 2025

New:

The add-ins for Microsoft Word are now also available in DOTM format. From Word 2007 onward, the files are exchanged for the previous DOT-format add-ins after RTFC is installed. This happens as soon as the Hypertext Wizard is called up. The DOTM format is based on the Office Open XML format, which administrators prefer over the DOT format: it is more efficient and allows stricter security policies to be enforced with regard to macro virus protection. For backward compatibility, both file variants are now kept in the RTFC installation directory. Please remember that if you use your own digital signature, the new templates now need to be signed.

New:

The method used to import PDF files can now be chosen from the context menu of a source file, of the output format, or of the further steps in the Hypertext Wizard. The options available are "Import PDF with Word" and "Import PDF as text". For the latter method, RTFC's text-import options apply as before. The behavior of Microsoft Word's own PDF import cannot be influenced by RTFC.

Improvement:

Since Microsoft Word's PDF import filter cannot import every file without exception, RTFC automatically falls back to its previous import filter in the event of an error. This applies, for example, to PDF files with a page size that Word does not support. In addition, Word is now run visibly for PDF import, so that any error messages can be acknowledged.

Improvement:

When saving files in computer Braille, the "Braille Table for Braille files" setting from Program Options is now taken into account, provided Unicode was selected as the "Storage Format for Braille files". This makes the effect of the selected Braille table on the display and printing of dot patterns visible. Without Unicode Braille, the encoding for computer Braille previously only affected printing.

Improvement:

When attempting to print an empty file in Braille, an appropriate error message now appears. Previously, a dialog for opening a file for printing was shown instead.

10.01

April 2025

New:

For importing PDF files, RTFC now uses Microsoft Word's own import filter. This requires an installed version of Microsoft Word 2016 or later. Word offers excellent support for tagged PDF files as well as the PDF/A format. Even with classic PDF documents that contain text as graphics and require optical character recognition (OCR), Word generally achieves good results. This allows PDF files to be converted to other formats in a single step, with most formatting preserved. Alternatively, PDF files can still be converted via RTFC's previous text import. In some cases, however, it can still be advisable to first convert the files to an RTF file and revise them, especially for sensitive target formats such as Braille, where every character counts.

Improvement:

For the keyboard echo during Braille input with the RTFC Braille keyboard, JAWS is now used, provided it is running and keyboard echo is enabled in RTFC's Program Options. This makes it easier to use the standard keyboard directly as a Braille keyboard after pressing <AltGr+Enter>, without further configuration.
When working with Braille input, most screen readers cannot announce the characters entered, because the key presses are not passed on to the screen reader. However, it is particularly helpful during back-translation for the characters to be announced, since something only appears on screen after a whole word has been entered. In this case, the characters entered can only be checked via the keyboard echo.

Improvement:

If the Hypertext Wizard was started with administrator rights, the association of the RTFC Braille Viewer as the display and print program in Windows File Explorer can now be repaired. To do this, go to Program Options, "File Types" tab, and click "Explorer". If "RtfcView" is assigned as the viewer program, this also restores the RTFC printer driver for the "Braille" and "Text only" file types.

10.0

January 2025

Release of version 10.