How do i convert rich text data stored as LONG to text

I have an app that stores documents as Rich Text format
in a LONG field in Oracle. Another app cannot query the table because it does not handle RTF. I was thinking the only
way to get around it is to write a stored proc. to strip off
the RTF tags/formatting and return just the text. Could
PL/SQL do this or would I need to do it in Java. I don't
think I can call it in Perl.