RTFD files longevity

Software
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Hello MPU Friends

I am currently in process of shifting from Evernote and looking at various alternatives.
I have shortlisted either Devnonthink or EagleFiler

I use Evernote mostly as filing cabinet, however a lot of my notes are where I attached emails and spreadsheets to these notes and work off those notes. Throughout the workday, I will open these attachments, update them and save them. Evernote allows me to save changes to attachment and sync the updated attachment. Something unfortunately Apple Notes lacks.

While recently playing with EagleFiler, I found that I can add attachment to RTF files. I was pleased to find that the same was possible in Devonthink too. The file gets converted to RTFD extension. I can add / open / save changes all to RTFD files and which get synced to my other computer

So my question before making the switch is related to longevity of RTFD files.

Are these files reliable over long time?
If I add lot of data, do these files tend to get corrupt over the period?

Thanks in advance

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Nobody can tell the future.

A few thoughts for you to ponder:

My recollection is that Evernote encapsulates your files into their own proprietary format. If Evernote disappears or stops working for you, you are likely to lose all your files. Fact check on this welcome, of course.

DEVONthink does not modify your files. It puts the files into the macOS File system and the DEVONthink database stores “meta” data about the files. If DEVONthink disappears and stops working, your files are still available. But macOS, your backups, and the media holding the files must still be working, naturally, to get your files.

You can think of your own list of risks to these files, but they won’t self-destruct. If the media on which the files are store fails, data lost. If you don’t have software than can interpret the file format anymore, data lost.

My bottom line. There is a lot of software out there that can read RTF files unless armageddon, probably that software will continue to work on operating systems of the future. Other well-know’/documented/published/standardised formats also have expected and anticipated long longevity, e.g. simple text files, PDF, etc. I personally would not rely on Evernote or any other product that uses their own format to store files. The bigger risk probably is that you media (hard disks, cloud storage, CDs, DVDs, floppy disks, … etc.) become unreadable due to hardware failure, technology moving on, commercial failure, etc.

The US Library of Congress has published extensively on the topic.

Remember, when you think of risks, fill in the full risk statement and mitigate accordingly: “Because of , might happen, leading to ”. That will help you assess your risk, consider your tolerance of that risk, and mitigations should your tolerance be exceeded.

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The main issue for me regarding RTFD file format longevity is that it seems to be macOS exclusive, because it was introduced in NextSTEP a million years ago. So, your files would not be transparently portable to Windows or Linux. Mobile support… not so sure about that.

Another possible “end of the world” scenario would be macOS stopping support for RTFD files, which are technically similar to the markdown-based TextBundle format based on the “bundle” macOS concept which is pretty fundational (apps are bundles themselves) so risk is low.

Apart from these risks, you are basically safe because support is built in the RTF framework included in macOS so any “mac-assed” app should support it.

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DEVONthink can handle (open, create, and save) RTF files without converting to RTFD. DEVONthink provides an export option of most anything to RTFD.

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Thank you every one for your valuable inputs

My recollection is that Evernote encapsulates your files into their own proprietary format. If Evernote disappears or stops working for you, you are likely to lose all your files. Fact check on this welcome, of course.

My impression was Evernote format was widely supported by other apps and hence not a real concern. The reason to look for alternative is because of recent direction which Evernote is going. I was a happy camper back in the day with old Evernote version.

Apart from these risks, you are basically safe because support is built in the RTF framework included in macOS so any “mac-assed” app should support it.

Thanks. I am in an “Apple Only” system so this really helps it

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For the benefit of other people who might be moving away from Evernote, could you say more based on your experience? What apps have you found does this and any URL’s with “how to”?

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I have not yet completely shifted away from Evernote, but as mentioned earlier evaluating options
In Evernote, you can export each notebook by right clicking and selecting “Export Notebook”
It will save these notebooks as ENEX format. I know only way of export notebooks one-by-one and not all notebooks at once

These files (.enex) once exported, can be imported into various apps.

Following are few apps which I found can import Evernote data

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There are more as I remember I import all of my Evernote into Notion using the importer developed by Notion.

Competitors usually have incentives to develop ways to bring data from popular tools because it will attract more users and result in business growth. Apple Notes and Evernote are examples.

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But, any organization is hidden and the files are not readily able to be put back into their folders easily. And that;'s not counting the very real possibility of permanent data loss.

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