Version 

Changes

9.09 

April 2026

9.08 

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.

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.

9.07 

September 2024

New: 

This version supports Word 2024 (desktop app) for the first time, as well as corresponding versions installed locally under Windows 10 or Windows 11 as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription.

New: 

If the Word List Generator is started while Microsoft Word is running in the foreground with an open, already-saved document, the document is now automatically loaded into the Word List Generator. You are taken directly to the "Word list" dialog step, where you can choose the desired list parameters. If no document is open, or Word is running minimized, the Word List Generator's start dialog is shown instead.

Improvement: 

In speech synthesis, a hyphen between Roman numerals is now interpreted as a range dash ("to") and read out correctly, provided it does not involve single letters.

Improvement: 

The interaction between conditional hyphens and active hyphenation was improved. In this context, the active-hyphenation word list was extended by several thousand words.

Improvement: 

This version fixes a problem with current versions of Microsoft Office 2021 or later (desktop app) and Microsoft 365 (subscription), which could cause a prompt to appear when closing Word asking whether changes to the file "RtfcWiz.dot" should be saved. This problem only occurred when add-ins from other vendors were present in addition to the RTFC add-ins.

Bug fix: 

If the duplex printing option was disabled in RTFC's Print dialog, the print output was unnecessarily terminated with a form-feed character. On an Enabling Juliet 120, this resulted in an unnecessary blank page.

Bug fix: 

The preview window for table profiles in the Hypertext Wizard did not always match the result after conversion to Braille, because leading spaces were not added for indicator characters.

9.06 

July 2024

New: 

This version supports the Microsoft Mobile Voices available from Windows 10 onward for the Narrator screen reader. If additional voices were installed under Windows, they can be made available for producing digital audiobooks by running the RTFC installer RtfcInst.exe again.

New: 

If the Hypertext Wizard is started while Microsoft Word is running in the foreground with an open, already-saved document, the document is now automatically loaded into the Wizard. You are taken directly to the "Target Files" dialog step, where you can choose the desired output format. If no document is open, or Word is running minimized, the Wizard's start dialog is shown instead. Calling up the Hypertext Wizard with the keyboard shortcut <AltGr+R> while Word is running is quicker than using the button in Word's add-ins.

Improvement: 

After a conversion to the intermediate "Rich Text Braille" format, RTFC now jumps to the current reading position from the source document, just as it does after a direct conversion to Braille. This also happens when the file is opened later from File Explorer.

Improvement: 

The KGS Corporation Braille Labeler BL-1000 can now also print computer Braille, with dots 7 and 8 each being clipped. Aside from making some characters illegible, computer Braille can also save space this way: numbers do not require a number sign, and some special characters, such as percent (represented by the full-cell sign), are considerably shorter than in uncontracted or contracted Braille.

Improvement: 

This version fixes a problem with current versions of Microsoft Office 2021 or later (desktop app) and Microsoft 365 (subscription) that caused the Braille and Daisy menu on Word's "Add-Ins" tab to be displayed incorrectly. It is not known whether older Office versions are also affected. Since early June 2024, due to a Microsoft update, the Braille and Daisy menus appeared swapped, and the Braille menu's label was no longer visible. For some customers, the problem even manifested as Microsoft Word crashing with an error message stating that not enough memory was available. Other customers reported that installation of the add-ins ran into an infinite loop. These problems are fixed with the current service release.

Bug fix: 

Using TrueType fonts with the Macintosh character set no longer results in umlauts and other special characters being displayed incorrectly.

Bug fix: 

When using superscript or subscript numbers and certain special characters such as note-reference brackets, lines could become too long, resulting in an incorrect line break in Braille. This problem also occurred when the source document contained direct dot-pattern specifications in the form "<ptnnn>".

Bug fix: 

Conversion to partially contracted Braille could cause the program to crash due to invalid memory access.

Bug fix: 

Braille input with the RTFC Braille keyboard can now again be done in computer Braille using the Braille table from RTFC's regional settings.

9.05 

April 2024

New: 

With the Braille tag "Ignore page breaks", manual page breaks are no longer carried over into the target file. Instead, the text flow continues without interruption. This can also be applied selectively to specific page breaks by inserting the tag before and after a page break to switch the page break off and back on.

Improvement: 

Back-translation is now always performed when a file with a file extension known for Braille is converted. If the file was not originally created with RTFC, or comes from a different device, the corresponding dialog is always shown at the start of conversion when the "Ask for back translation settings" option is enabled. Back-translation is also performed when a file contains binary zeros and may not be a well-formed BRL file. If the file does not conform to the rules of Braille, or contains invalid control characters, the back-translation result may be correspondingly poor.

Improvement: 

Keywords in an index now also include words that occur exclusively in headings. Previously, only the body text without headings was taken into account.

Improvement: 

The accessibility check now also takes manually continued bullet lists and numbered lists into account. If a follow-up line in a list was created with a paragraph mark and the bullet character was then deleted with the Backspace key, this is now flagged as an error. If you want to write several paragraphs within one list item, you must use manual (soft) line breaks to join the paragraphs together. Otherwise, the list will be broken at that point when converting to file formats such as Braille, Daisy, or HTML, and will no longer appear as a continuous list.

Improvement: 

In the accessibility report, the context around a quotation mark shown for the "Odd number of quotation marks" warning is now presented more clearly. This makes it easier to find incorrectly placed or missing quotation marks in documents.

Improvement: 

In the accessibility report, footnotes and endnotes are now counted separately in the object statistics.

Improvement: 

In the accessibility report, the font statistics now also show the character tables and associated language groups. Character tables for foreign languages are assigned automatically by Word when you use foreign-language letters in a document. Displaying them in the accessibility report lets you check whether this may have happened unintentionally.

Bug fix: 

If a graphic's alt text contained Unicode characters, it could not be carried over into the target file.

Bug fix: 

When converting to Braille, the print-page transition after a manual page break was not indicated if the "Wrap text" option in the "Format" section of the text profile was disabled. This affected, among others, documents converted with the "Note Taker" profile.

Bug fix: 

When converting to Braille, line breaks within indicator characters for table cells at the start of a page were not output if the "Mark Print page with page Number" option was enabled.

Bug fix: 

If the "Save files in source Folder" option is enabled and a document from OneDrive is converted to an audiobook with Microsoft Word, the files are now saved in a subdirectory next to the source document. If the location of the source document cannot be determined on the local computer, the subdirectory is created in RTFC's configured default target directory. Previously, in this case the files were incorrectly saved directly in the default target directory without a subdirectory.

9.04 

July 2023

New: 

In the supplied "Note Taker" text profile for Braille, the "Wrap text" option in the "Format" section is disabled. As a result, wrapping only occurs at paragraph marks from the source document, so each paragraph becomes a single long line. This kind of formatting is well suited for reading texts on a Braille notetaker that has its own line-wrap function. If print page numbers were defined in the source document, they are carried over, and the print-page transition is indicated in the body text together with the page number. In addition, tables are converted into a list, with the individual cells indented in a stepped pattern, so that tables can also be read sensibly on a notetaker.

New: 

With the "Mark Heading Level" option, the outline level is indicated before every heading in plain text and Braille output. This makes a heading's outline level easy to recognize and locatable using an editor's search function. This option can be used as an alternative to, or together with, the "Underline headings" option. The outline level is shown on the same line before a heading, so no extra line is needed as with underlining. This option also works when line wrapping is disabled in the "Format" section of the text profile — for example, when preparing a file for a Braille notetaker.

New: 

If the "Mark Heading Level" option is enabled in the text profile, a new tab called "Headings" appears via the "Details" button. Here, indicator and terminator characters for headings can be freely defined. Certain meta-characters already familiar from tables or graphics can be used to design headings. This opens up further ways to represent headings in Braille, in addition to paragraph formatting from the document and the options from the text profile (Professional Edition only).

New: 

With the Braille tags "Indicator for Headings" and "Indicator for Ending Headings", the rendering of headings can be designed just as freely as for tables and graphics. This opens up further ways to represent headings in Braille, in addition to paragraph formatting from the document and the options from the text profile (Professional Edition only).

Improvement: 

The table of contents for plain text and Braille output can now also be generated when line wrapping is disabled in the "Format" section of the text profile. In this case it cannot contain Braille page numbers, since the page length is not defined and page numbering is therefore not possible; however, if print page numbers were defined in the source document, they are carried over. This produces citable BRL files that, together with the outline-level marking for headings, can be read as conveniently as is possible with a Daisy audiobook.

Improvement: 

The advanced settings for Braille and the MP3 encoder for audiobooks, as well as the paper format and page margins for printers, have been added to the export function. By exporting and importing settings in Program Options, "Compatibility" tab, these settings can now also be used as defaults for other users at the same workstation, or transferred to other computers (Professional Edition only).

Improvement: 

Importing settings in Program Options, "Compatibility" tab, now also takes an optionally defined workgroup directory into account. The directory is created on the target system if necessary, and files previously exported from another computer are reconciled with the workgroup directory. This allows all settings to be restored if they were lost after a server on the local network was replaced (Professional Edition only).

Improvement: 

If a list using the "ListN" and "List ContinuationN" paragraph styles was formatted according to "E-book standard 16" and is placed inside a frame, the frame is now displayed left-aligned across all list levels. Although this differs from the display in Microsoft Word, it better matches the expectations of users of the e-book standard. Please note that this kind of rendering only occurs if the "Convert special notations according to the e-book standard" option is enabled in the text profile, or an e-book tag has already been used in the document (Professional Edition only).

Improvement: 

Within frames created using Braille tags or e-book tags, paragraph formatting for text alignment can now also be used. This makes it possible to center text within such frames, or align it right (Professional Edition only).

Improvement: 

The accessibility check now also takes page numbers into account that were defined either in double parentheses or via Braille tags. It checks whether the page numbers increase continuously. Page numbers that have already been defined, that are lower than the current page, or that skip a page, are reported.
Defining page numbers in documents is important for being able to publish citable works in digital form.

Improvement: 

In audiobooks, Roman numerals are now recognized and pronounced correctly based on certain keywords before or after the numeral. Keywords include terms such as "Chapter", "Section", "Paragraph", "Plate", "Table", or "Part" (and their German equivalents).

Improvement: 

In the Info dialog, it is now possible to reset the RTFC Word integration so that it is reinitialized the next time the program starts. This is necessary if the user templates directory or the Word autostart directory has been reconfigured, or if a repair or reinstallation of Word has been carried out. This reinitializes the Word integration for the current user.

Bug fix: 

If a file was to be created in the user profile via the context menu in File Explorer, and the %PERSONAL% environment variable was not defined, the target directory could not be created.

Bug fix: 

If a file was prepared in Braille such that a line break follows every page break, the resulting extra blank line is now ignored in print output.

Bug fix: 

After selecting a Daisy player via the "Select Daisy playback device" link, the Hypertext Wizard incorrectly advanced to the next dialog step. In addition, the progress display was not removed after transferring a Daisy book once a conversion had finished.

9.03 

October 2022

New: 

To make files created by RTFC easier to find, a shortcut to the target directory is now created on the user's desktop. If you want to remove this shortcut from the desktop, disable the "Create desktop shortcut for target files" option in Program Options, "Folders" tab.

New: 

Via the "Braille contractions" menu item in the context menu of the contraction-profile drop-down list, a report on all contractions in the contraction classes and contraction profiles can now be retrieved.

Improvement: 

If you have set the directory for a workgroup on the local network and want to access an exception list or pronunciation dictionary that is already open in another user, you now receive a notice containing that user's login name. This lets you specifically ask other users to close the file and thus release it.

Improvement: 

When converting to a Word document or a PDF file, the alt text of graphics is now also carried over.

Improvement: 

When converting via the context menu in Explorer, the respective source file is now also added to the list of recently used files. This list can be accessed from the context menu of the "Add File" button in the Hypertext Wizard.

Improvement: 

When converting to Braille, multiple consecutive spaces within headings are now also carried over.

Improvement: 

When temporarily switching to expert mode via the "Manage Additional Settings" link, the current list item in a checklist remains selected. This makes it easier for blind and visually impaired users to keep their bearings in the dialogs.

Improvement: 

The MP3 encoder settings are now managed separately for the "Daisy" and "Audio" formats. A change to one of the two formats therefore no longer affects the other.

Bug fix: 

When defining contraction profiles for the "UEB" language, the "More" button showed duplicate entries for contractions in the "Strong Contractions" class.

Bug fix: 

Immediately after opening the Braille rendering dialog in the text profile, the wrong help topic was assigned, so pressing the "Help" button or <F1> brought up a different help topic.

9.02 

January 2022

New: 

This version supports Word 2021 (desktop app) for the first time, as well as corresponding versions installed locally under Windows 10 or Windows 11 as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription.
This also enables conversion of files from OneDrive folders and other cloud solutions that are edited with Microsoft Word.
In addition, the RTFC installer has been improved, so that third-party Microsoft 365 distributions in which Office was not fully registered are now also detected.

New: 

This version supports Microsoft Edge for displaying HTML pages for the first time. If you create files in HTML format, or work with RTFC's accessibility check, you can now also choose Edge as the browser in Program Options, "File Types" tab. Edge is likewise offered in the context menu of the "View" button when you convert a document to HTML. This requires at least Windows 10 Release 1909.

New: 

For keyboard operation, static text and groups are now also included in the Tab order. This increases the amount of information available to users who work with a screen reader and are not yet familiar with operating the program. However, this also requires more key presses for navigating the dialogs. This behavior can therefore be switched off in Program Options, "General" tab, via the "Accessibility" button, using the "Keep focus on Buttons" option. This also affects focus on buttons that have already been triggered. If you disable this option, focus automatically moves to another dialog element after a button is pressed. This lets you trigger the default button ("OK" or "Next") at any time with the Enter key.

New: 

When selecting source files in the Hypertext Wizard, a file analysis can now be performed. To do this, choose the "Analyze file" menu item from the context menu of a source file. For documents, an accessibility check is performed. For audio files, the key parameters for conversion into a digital audiobook are determined and displayed.

New: 

In the "Print" and "Printer Setup" dialogs, you can now use the context menu of the printer drop-down list to turn off automatic hardware detection of new USB printers, if you only want to work with USB printers or Windows printer drivers that have already been detected. Here you can also retrieve the printer's properties, including the current print format and control sequences, to check whether the printer is correctly configured within RTFC.

New: 

When converting to Braille with the Hypertext Wizard, you can now open the configuration dialog for the RTFC Braille Viewer directly from the context menus of the output-format and further-steps drop-down lists, as well as from the "View" button. When converting to contracted Braille, you can also go directly here to select a contraction profile for partial contraction.

New: 

Round and square brackets with a space between them are now passed through to Braille as round and curly brackets, to make it easier to create simple forms with checkboxes. This kind of rendering follows the convention used by screen readers, which represent selection fields and check boxes in the same way.

Improvement: 

When converting tables to HTML, column headers are now marked, provided they were specified as a header row in the document or formatted in bold. This makes navigation with a screen reader easier, including in the Daisy full text.

Improvement: 

Via the "Do not Consider this Device Again" option, the currently displayed device can be excluded from automatic detection as a Daisy player. This means that detection of target drives for audiobooks is no longer disabled entirely — only the current device is ignored.

Improvement: 

Automatic book transfer now works with process synchronization that prevents the system from being overloaded by the simultaneous transfer of multiple audiobooks.

Improvement: 

Automatic detection of Daisy players can now distinguish between the different models of the Bones Milestone. However, the Milestone 112 is not recognized by RTFC as a Daisy player, since it does not support flexible directory names and therefore cannot be loaded with multiple Daisy books via automatic book transfer. Please note that the Milestone 112 is nevertheless able to play the MP3 files of Daisy books if they are copied by hand into one of the folders M1 through M5.

Improvement: 

Automatic book transfer now takes into account the new control files generated for the Bones Milestone from firmware version 6.1 onward. This means that Milestone's navigation options are updated automatically whenever the same audiobook is converted and transferred again.

Improvement: 

If a system crash occurs while an exception list or a pronunciation dictionary is being edited, the data saved up to that point is preserved after the program restarts.

Bug fix: 

Cursor tracking with JAWS did not always work correctly immediately after opening a BRL file with the RTFC Braille Viewer, causing the cursor to incorrectly jump back to the start of the file instead of remaining at the current conversion position.

Bug fix: 

On some computers, generating an accessibility report could take several minutes.

Bug fix: 

BRL files with a line length of less than 10 characters can now be printed without problems on printers from Index and Thiel.

Bug fix: 

Page breaks could not be saved in NOT files (for musical notation).

Bug fix: 

When sorting source files, file names with leading zeros were sorted incorrectly if the zeros stood alone.

Bug fix: 

Specifying wildcards for the target file on the command line could result in an incorrect target file name being used.

Bug fix: 

The keyboard shortcut <Ctrl+Shift+R> for starting the RTFC Document Reader was also interpreted outside Microsoft Word, which prevented its use in other programs. For example, the "Reply All" function in an email program could no longer be triggered with <Ctrl+Shift+R>.

Bug fix: 

Within emphasized (highlighted) text in Braille, the hyphen was not recognized as a word boundary, which in certain situations caused unnecessary terminator characters to be placed before a hyphen.

Bug fix: 

Standalone question marks, exclamation marks, and periods in parentheses now receive cancellation dot 6 in contracted Braille, to avoid confusion with single-cell contractions.

9.01 

October 2020

New: 

We have extended the context menu in File Explorer with two additional menu items that allow direct conversion to Braille and digital audiobooks. In addition to the integration in Microsoft Word and conversion via the Hypertext Wizard, this provides a third way to use RTFC. If you hold down the Shift key while choosing these menu items, a dialog appears for changing the default settings. This lets you configure the menu items and specify which format you prefer in each case. For Braille, you choose between contracted Braille, uncontracted Braille, or computer Braille. For Daisy, you can choose between different types of audiobooks or plain audio files.

New: 

Select the folder or a file from a Daisy book in File Explorer and choose "Perform book transfer" from the context menu to load this audiobook onto your player. The only requirement is that you have agreed to use the connected Daisy player as the target device for audiobook transfer, or have selected it manually. Of course, Daisy books that were not created with RTFC can also be transferred.

New: 

To select a Daisy player for automatic book transfer, the "Select Daisy playback device" link is now available in the "Target Files" dialog step/tab. This makes it possible to select a player not only in the Hypertext Wizard, but also in the default settings for Daisy.

New: 

When you use the Hypertext Wizard to convert files to Braille or Portable Document Format, you can now open the text-import options from the context menu of the "Further Steps" drop-down list. These options let you influence the conversion in order to filter out certain parts of the text and obtain a formatted document optimized for further processing.

New: 

With the Braille tag "Convert according to the e-book standard", a document can be marked as an e-book. This means, on the one hand, that the corresponding option no longer needs to be enabled in the text profile. On the other hand, it allows this option to be switched on and off in the course of a document. This is useful when the conversion rules for special notations according to e-book standard 16 are to be overridden for parts of the document.

Improvement: 

Automatic book transfer is now carried out as a transaction, so that files already copied are rolled back in the event of a cancellation. This prevents incomplete audiobooks from remaining on your player and taking up storage space.

Improvement: 

Font-class settings now also affect the rendering of note-reference brackets in connection with e-book tags. This makes it possible, for example, to use German-style note-reference brackets in English texts, when e-book tags are rendered in German via font classes.

Improvement: 

With a contraction ban before the numerator of integer fractions, UEB now also uses the alternative notation with a forward slash instead of the fraction line.

Bug fix: 

The distinction between single characters and single words for emphasis (highlighting) in UEB did not take the apostrophe into account as a possible part of a word. Words introduced with an apostrophe, such as in "I've" or "You'll", are now also marked with the sign for single words.

Bug fix: 

When generating several Braille files in parallel, insufficient process synchronization during the instantiation of Microsoft Word objects could cause the RTFC Braille Viewer to crash.

Bug fix: 

With umlauts in file names, cross-references between documents could not be resolved in HTML and the Daisy full text. Umlauts in file names are now replaced with their respective base letter.

Bug fix: 

Footnote text in HTML and the Daisy full text was not rendered if a file had previously been converted to Braille with a restricted footnote level.

9.0 

July 2020

 

Release of version 9.

See also: 

What's new in RTFC version 9?