re: RTF (Rich Text Formatting)

[Mark Gathers]

We have a pathology system that would like to send results using RTF formatting in OBX-5.  We would like to know if there are any issues we should be aware of supporting RTF result interfaces.  Any information would be appreciated.

Regards

Mark Gathers

Integration Engineer, Information Technology

University Health Associates

West Virginia University Hospitals

Phone: 304.598.4000 x75615

Email:  gathersm@wvuh.com

Topic

[Anonymous]

Yes this should be possible. You have to take care of two things: file size and used characters.

If RTF format uses any non-printable characters or characters used as segment delimiters or filed delimiters or encoding characters,  then you have to uuencode the RTF file, before you enter it into the segment.

If you uuencode the file, then you have some characters, that must be translated into others, as an example:

Replace :

“|” -> “F”

“^” -> “S”

“~” -> “R”

“&” -> “T”

“” -> “E”

“nn”  (“nn” is the hexadecimal value for line feed and cariage return) -> “Xnn”

Now enter the file into an Segment. As the file is normaly to big for a translation, we do the following trick:

– pre-translation: save the value (= i.e. the uuencoded and changed rtf file) in an global variable and delete it from the segment;

-post-translation: copy the value from the global variable into the segment.

The receiver has to all transitions backwards.

[Author]

Replies