Two things that amuse me here. One is that MS couldn't find a way to work with adobe, not just on this but on their use of PDF in the overall vista interface. Apple, despite making apps that compete more directly with adobe (like FCP), is able to work things out with them to where, as noted in the article, you can print PDFs from virtually any application (helps to have the entire GUI based on the format).

The other thing is that MS thinks that XPS even has a chance. Already CNET has labed it a possible "PDF-Killer". There is simply no way that will ever happen. Its like a pee wee football team challenging the New England Patriots. Its going to be even funnier because MS is so used to having the upper hand.

Now if there's some way to get them to remove the ability to export to Office Docs as Web Pages.

Quote

DaiMac wrote:
The other thing is that MS thinks that XPS even has a chance. Already CNET has labed it a possible "PDF-Killer". There is simply no way that will ever happen. Its like a pee wee football team challenging the New England Patriots. Its going to be even funnier because MS is so used to having the upper hand.

Is there any technical reason you think XPS will fail, or is it just because of PDF's current dominance? I agree that it would be virtually impossible to unseat PDF in just one generation, but change does have to start somewhere.

This is one area where I'm actually rooting for MS. (That's definitely a first.) XML means OPEN and FLEXIBLE, which are both very good things. Then again, knowing MS, they'll probably manage to make even an XML file format closed and restrictive.

Mikuro said "....XML means OPEN and FLEXIBLE"

You have GOT to be kidding, right? We're talking about Microsoft here, and there ain't NUTHIN "OPEN" or "FLEXIBLE" about ANYTHING they've done. As a prime example, I'll point you to the html standard and you go look at how MS kept it OPEN & FLEXIBLE with I.E.

If you want any kind of standard that doesn't get all mucked up so it's a pain in the butt to use, just keep MS out of it.

So far XML means unopen and inflexible, since only web-heads and maybe a few variable-print gurus even understand what the hell it is. It will be long, long, long time before XML is ready for litho, and that is what will prevent it from unseating PDF any time in the forseable future. If all you think PDF is good for is the web, then I suppose you would see XML as a panacea for portability — it couldn't be farther away from that.

As librarians and archivists around the world will tell you the PDF format is by no means perfect. It is quite interesting that current archiving efforts usually rotate around TIFF rather than the PDF Format. So from this point of view, why not expect XPS to do well.

Microsoft Office will be implemented bit by bit by thousands and thousand of companines and with that the format will become more common. It is a bit like OpenOffice - they can do PDFs, they can do their own really cool format, but in the end when someone wants to share their work with someone else, they will revert back to the good old .doc format

Quote

Guest wrote:
As librarians and archivists around the world will tell you the PDF format is by no means perfect. It is quite interesting that current archiving efforts usually rotate around TIFF rather than the PDF Format. So from this point of view, why not expect XPS to do well.

Microsoft Office will be implemented bit by bit by thousands and thousand of companines and with that the format will become more common. It is a bit like OpenOffice - they can do PDFs, they can do their own really cool format, but in the end when someone wants to share their work with someone else, they will revert back to the good old .doc format

I can understand a TIFF for a scan of an old book, but when I create a booklet or something I save it out as PDF. Among other things users can search for text strings in a PDF.

Yes, with all the Word users using XPS it could easily displace PDF's dominance.

As to using a word processor for creating a "really cool format", well I suppose it could be done.

Quote

It's unclear what Microsoft's move means for the next version of Office for the Mac. Right now, Office 2004 includes a plug-in that lets you export to PDF if Acrobat is already installed on your Mac. Mac OS X also lets you save documents to Adobe's PDF format from the print dialog in most applications.

Actually you don't even need acrobat installed and I read somewhere else that the PDF option isn't due to a meeting between adobe and apple but rather apple creating a PDF compatible format and just using the term PDF that can be read in all adobe acrobat products.

There are some important differences between the OS X print dialog's "Save as PDF" and Adobe Acrobat PDFs. OS X's implementation was preceded by several years (e.g., OS 7.5.5.) by a "Print to PDF" extension (not by Apple). It doesn't do everything that Adobe Acrobat can. Examples of things you can't do with Apple's software/implementation:

- Control image resolution and quality (that's one thing that often makes Apple's PDFs huge).

- Make PDF forms.

- Add interactive elements (e.g., hyperlinks).

- Add a clickable table of contents and index.

- Edit/modify a PDF. If you make a change in the source document, you have to print to PDF again. (Acrobat allows for collaborative documents.)

- Capture text that's formatted in columns the way it is written (you will capture the entire width of the page).


There are third-party programs that address some of these issues, but Acrobat is required for many advanced capabilities.

Quote

gslusher wrote:
Examples of things you can't do with Apple's software/implementation:

- Control image resolution and quality (that's one thing that often makes Apple's PDFs huge).

- Make PDF forms.

- Add interactive elements (e.g., hyperlinks).

- Add a clickable table of contents and index.

- Edit/modify a PDF. If you make a change in the source document, you have to print to PDF again. (Acrobat allows for collaborative documents.)

- Capture text that's formatted in columns the way it is written (you will capture the entire width of the page).


There are third-party programs that address some of these issues, but Acrobat is required for many advanced capabilities.

It's actually interesting that Apple doesn't have support for at least some the above features. I'm thinking especially along the lines of hyperlinks and columns (and, I guess, the TOC/Index thing, though that's actually just hyperlinks). When I convert a LaTeX document to PDF, using pdflatex, these things all work perfectly (in fact, cross-references within the document, which LaTeX has always supported, are automatically turned into hyperlinks).

Assuming that Apple's implementation is (at least loosely) based on the open source engines (as much of OS X is), it's quite surprising that these features don't exist. That said, though, I guess for things like hyperlinks, the internal representation of each file format would have to be known, in order to make the conversion.

Does anyone have details of how the current OS X Print to PDF functionality works? Does it just take the postscript that would normally be sent to the printer and convert it to PDF? That could account for the file size compared to an Adobe PDF.

This is all very interesting to me...

Quote

Right now, Office 2004 includes a plug-in that lets you export to PDF if Acrobat is already installed on your Mac. Presumably, Microsoft won't include the plug-in with future versions of Office, but if the company was so inclined, it could also potentially disable the print to PDF option in Mac OS X print dialogs for Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Does Office 2004 actually include the plug-in? That's news to me. I thought the plug-in shipped with Acrobat. I could very well be wrong. In my experience, though, it's always been the provider of a feature that provided the plug-in for it (just as Canon provides a Photoshop plug-in that lets me use my scanner in the app.).

As for removing the Print to PDF capability, I doubt it very much. That's a feature of the OS, not the application. Based on my limited knowledge of the APIs (and it is, at this stage, very limited, as I'm only just starting to develop for OS X), Microsoft can't specify if that feature is enabled.

js.

Hi,
OSX's PDFs are large by default but you can use the ColorSync Utility (in the Utilities folder) to compress them down a lot more. It makes a huge difference.
I don't know why these capabilities aren't just included as an 'expert' mode when using the "Save as PDF..." function?

Considering that so many non technical people don't even know what acrobat is I see no reason to thinkk that Micrpsoft can't impose its own format on the masses. I get very frustrated that I can't even pass my CV on to people in pdf format making it truly croos platform rather than the dictated .doc format with all its restrictions but that is the case. At the general office level the MS format will take over and from there they will push it into the pro market. Unless I am not seeing something here i think that Adobe must be mad to cut itself off from the very market that will longer term will invade its own space if left alone to take on a competitors format. Very short sighted.

Quote

Guest wrote:
Considering that so many non technical people don't even know what acrobat is I see no reason to thinkk that Micrpsoft can't impose its own format on the masses. I get very frustrated that I can't even pass my CV on to people in pdf format making it truly croos platform rather than the dictated .doc format with all its restrictions but that is the case. At the general office level the MS format will take over and from there they will push it into the pro market. Unless I am not seeing something here i think that Adobe must be mad to cut itself off from the very market that will longer term will invade its own space if left alone to take on a competitors format. Very short sighted.

This is all based on some assumptions that I tend to question:

1. People will update to this version of Office anytime soon. It takes quite a bit of time and money to upgrade every user in a corporate setting to a newer version of Office. These migrations must be justified by increased productivity. So, the newest versions of Office provide some other incredibly needed tools, I doubt this new format will show up anytime soon.

2. People will blindly choose a format they have never seen before. I still have a hard time convincing people to save documents as .rtf. This format has been around forever yet, still, everyone saves in the limited .doc format. For 90% of consumers they hit save and let the computer choose. So unless Microsoft makes this new format the default save type, most won't even know it exists. Heck, PDF took a LONG time to even start showing up in most peoples lexicon. Now that many finally understand it, what incentive is there to change to something else?

3. It will actually be a useful improvement. Having worked in web design, I appreciate the power of XML. However, many people will not understand nor care about this format. They don't really care about PDF as it is. The ones that do would, theoretically, already have most of their files/systems set up based on the higher-level functions in the PDF format. Unless this new format is a HUGE improvement, there will be little incentive for these folks to switch over.

4. Microsoft won't do as they have typically done in the past with every new format they introduce, i.e. make it closed, controlled by them, and inconsistent with any other established norms (I'm specifically thinking of IE here).

So to sum up, unless Microsoft works some serious magic I can't see this format taking off anytime soon, if at all. In addition, if Vista is any indication, Microsoft currently seems to be unable to bring new technologies to the market in a timely fashion that could allow them to gain the marketshare they would need with a new format like this to become the norm.

PDF isn't a particularly big 'consumer' format, and in fact I find most PC owners loath it (mostly due to the poor integration of IE/Firefox and Acrobat).

However, it is going to take an awful lot to shift it's dominance amongst producers. In many countries it is now the mandated format for government documents (following successful campaigns by advocates about government departments putting on-line documents in proprietary formats).

On the wider question : PDF is, as far as I know, an 'open' standard. That is anyone can write software that produces PDF files without paying Adobe royalties, rather than in the 'open source' sense.

I presume where you get into murkier ground is on software patents relating to the Acrobat PDF authoring program. These may be responsible for the limited PDF support in OS X and the arguments with Microsoft. You can have the ridiculous situation where the standard may be open, but creating a program to 'embed a HTML link into a PDF document' may be patented.