The 1992 revision defined support for Microsoft Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) objects and Macintosh Edition Manager subscriber objects. RTF specifications for Microsoft Word RTF version RTF files were used to produce Windows Help files, though these have since been superseded by Microsoft Compiled HTML Help files. Microsoft anticipates no further updates to RTF, but has stated willingness to consider editorial and other non-substantive modifications of the RTF Specification during an associated ISO/IEC 29500 balloting period.
Microsoft has discontinued enhancements to the RTF specification, so features new to Word 2010 or a later version will not save properly to RTF. The final version was 1.9.1 in 2008, which implemented features of Office 2007.
All subsequent releases of Microsoft Word for Macintosh, as well as all Windows versions, can read and write in RTF format. The first RTF reader and writer shipped in 1987 as part of Microsoft Word 3.0 for Macintosh, which implemented the RTF version 1.0 specification. Richard Brodie, Charles Simonyi, and David Luebbert, members of the Microsoft Word development team, developed the original RTF in the middle to late 1980s.
