converting to RTF

Hi guys. Before I start i must tell you that i am new to php, been using it for about a month.I have posted a thread previously but i didnt get too much help. i have also been searching the net ALOT and cant find anything that can help me. So heres the story. I have a database which contains records that have been entered using a VB program (rich text area). the format of the records is a RTF I think. this is what a typical record will look like in the database: {¬rtf1¬ansi¬ansicpg1252¬deff0¬deflang7177{¬fonttbl{¬f0¬fnil¬fcharset0 MS Sans Serif;}} ¬viewkind4¬uc1¬pard¬f0¬fs17 Hoffman, L. D. 1996. A new Marketing Paradigm for Electronic commerce. ¬i Research: Manuscripts ¬par } So I want to display this in its origional form (the origional text with whatever bold/italics/underlining that there is). When i do a select statement on the database. How do I go about this? are there different types of RTFs? and is it a problem that this text has been entered in the dB by a VB program? I am actually clueless where to start. I have been trying for days to find help. if anyone could help I would appreciate it alot. thanx in advance