Install unrtf with Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• unrtf

Project history

The official release README identifies Zachary Smith as the author in 2004, while AUTHORS names him as original author and lists Arkadiusz Firus as a major contributor, with Dave Davey and Jean-Francois Dockes as maintainers in the 0.21.10 release tarball.

GNU FTP release listings show public UnRTF releases by 2001, with 0.18.1 on the FTP site and later 0.19.x, 0.20.x, and 0.21.x releases. The GNU page documents an important 0.21.0 change: codepage conversion moved to iconv and output control moved to runtime configuration files, making output tuning and new output formats easier.

The NEWS file shows the later 0.21 branch mostly as maintenance and correctness work: table processing, EndNote citation support, image extraction improvements, EMF picture handling, Windows portability fixes, malformed-file hardening, AddressSanitizer-found overflow fixes, and build-system patches.

Adoption history

The supplied package metadata shows UnRTF packaged across Homebrew, Alpine/apk, Debian, Fedora/dnf, MacPorts, Nix, Arch/pacman, Ubuntu, and openSUSE/zypper. That breadth fits a GNU utility whose job is to give scripts and distributions a non-interactive way to extract content from legacy `.rtf` documents.

UnRTF's adoption niche is older office-document conversion rather than modern office-suite automation. It matters where a small C binary is preferable to launching a full office suite and where imperfect but scriptable RTF-to-HTML conversion is good enough for indexing, migration, or text extraction.

How it is used

The GNU page describes UnRTF as a command-line converter, with the strongest documented feature set for HTML output: font, size, weight, slant, underline, strikethrough, special text effects, superscripts, subscripts, foreground and background colors, and conversion of special characters to HTML entities.

The release README is candid about limitations, saying the converter works reasonably well but has bugs and somewhat ugly output, with known issues around paragraph alignment and picture storing. That caveat is part of its real-world use: it is a pragmatic batch converter for RTF, not a perfect document renderer.

Why package nerds care

For package nerds, UnRTF is valuable because it is a small GNU tool that covers a legacy format without pulling in a graphical office suite. It is the kind of converter that appears in build scripts, document indexing jobs, archival workflows, and text-mining pipelines where reproducible command-line behavior matters more than visual fidelity.

It also carries classic distribution concerns: GNU FTP tarballs and signatures, a Savannah Mercurial repository, GPL licensing, iconv/codepage behavior, installed output configuration files, and a long tail of security hardening for malformed input files.

Timeline

• 2001: GNU FTP lists UnRTF 0.18.1.
• 2004: Release README identifies Zachary Smith and describes Linux, BSD, and DOS/DJGPP builds.
• 2009: 0.21.0 moves codepage conversion to iconv and output control to runtime configuration files.
• 2014: 0.21.8 improves picture handling, EMF support, Windows portability, and malformed-file safety.
• 2015: 0.21.9 fixes text conversion, improves table handling, and adds EndNote citation support.
• 2018: 0.21.10 applies Gentoo automake and iconv detection patches.

Related projects

• UnRTF is related to the GNU toolchain, iconv, RTF document producers, HTML converters, LaTeX and troff workflows, and heavier office-suite converters such as LibreOffice-based tools.

Sources

• https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/unrtf/
• https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/unrtf/unrtf-0.21.10.tar.gz
• https://www.gnu.org/software/unrtf
• source_facts.package-manager