Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft takes on PDF
bhhenry writes "Linux Format reports on a new Microsoft PDF-killer technology to be included in Office 11, called XDocs. From the article: "Adobe's stock took an immediate hit, and some analysts went so far as to compare Adobe to erstwhile MS competitor Netscape.""
XDocs is an XML editor. It really has very little to do with output formats like PDF. The only company likely to be sweating about this product is Altova.
bp
Let me guess, IE7 will include built in support for them.
It was mentioned at MozillaZine for a month ago or so that IE7 won't be released (although I have my doubts) and Microsoft will go 100% MSN Explorer in future releases of Windows.
But I'm sure what you meant was "Let me guess, The Next Browser will include built-in support for them" and I guess that's likely.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
| * MS Office uses a closed, proprietary format |and that's bad.
| * OpenOffice uses XML, and that's good.
| * Now Microsoft want to use XML too... but |that's also bad
Big difference:
Microsoft's DTD (Document Type Definitions) are proprietary, which makes use of the open framework XML just as proprietary.
Microsoft's use of XML *is* bad indeed.
I can't read the slashdotted article right now, but if by "immediate hit" they mean that the stock jumped almost 12% in one day, they're right. Of course, maybe that's just related to their confirmation of projected 4th quarter earnings.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
XDocs has almost nothing to do with pdf. Please read the article or the description of xdocs on MS site.
.Net server products, Microsoft can address both sides of the forms equation.
.Net server components, as it most likely will be, Microsoft will have a significant selling point.
It is basically a way to create a front-end for XML docs or XML web services. This way, a user can say, well this field is a drop-down and this one is a date field and this is how I want to arrange it on a screen. While they are doing this, they are linking the fields to nodes in the XML doc.
Think of it as a MS Access gui front-end tool over an XML source. It's focus is data entry not presentation, exactly the opposite of PDF.
If you think xdocs and acrobat are equivalent, then the same could be said about any word processor or html editor or desktop publishing tool, etc.
Article:
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XDocs vs. Adobe:
POSTEDON 2002-10-31 13:07:47 by Linux Format Admin
Microsoft hyperdaz writes "Two weeks ago Microsoft announced XDocs, a new application that will be part of the upcoming Office 11 suite.
XDocs, according to Microsoft, will make it easier to create richly formatted online forms, and to simplify the collection of form data. Because it uses XML, XDocs form data should integrate with a variety of data repositories with relative ease.
The first reaction from tech pundits was to proclaim that a mortal blow had been struck against Adobe, the PDF file format, and Adobe's Acrobat family of PDF manipulation products. Adobe's stock took an immediate hit, and some analysts went so far as to compare Adobe to erstwhile MS competitor Netscape.
It's a bit premature to be ringing alarm bells for Adobe, though. XDocs will be a strong challenge to certain facets of Acrobat, but there are significant differences between the two products, and where they are similar, Adobe is in a position to put up a good fight.
XDocs's obvious challenge to Acrobat is in the online forms market.
In that narrow field, it's clear why XDocs is perceived as a threat: Forms, by their nature, require a client and a server. Between their virtual lock on the office productivity suite market and the popularity of SQL Server, Exchange, and the rest of the
While PDF forms can be integrated with backend sources like SAP and PeopleSoft, XDocs forms will be able to do this as well, according to Microsoft, and if XDocs is deeply integrated into Exchange and other
While Acrobat Reader may be everywhere, it's safe to say that it probably isn't used as often as Office, and Microsoft could gain an advantage in the forms market simply by producing a well designed, easy-to-use product with a user interface that's familiar and inviting to people who already use the other Office products regularly. Adobe's defense against this has been to make it possible to create PDFs from any application, including Office. How these differences will work out competitively remains to be seen, and depend on how well XDocs is executed, and how well both Adobe and Microsoft educate potential customers.
But it's important to remember that most people don't use PDFs for online forms--in fact, many people aren't aware that they even can be used for that purpose. The most common use of PDF is to securely distribute documents that can be viewed and printed consistently across different platforms. XDocs, judging from Microsoft's announcements to date, doesn't address these features, and for the foreseeable future Adobe has this market to itself. What this means is that XDocs is unlikely to take market share away from PDF--what Microsoft appears to be trying to do is limit the growth of PDF, because PDF's true strengths in secure document distribution and printing remain unchallenged.
Well before the XDocs announcements, though, Adobe was expanding the forms functionality of PDF.
"PDF is evolving beyond a document format, and is now a rich information container," according to Julie McEntee, Director of Product Management for Adobe. As part of that effort Adobe recently announced a new, more forms-friendly version of Acrobat Reader, and beefed up its line of PDF server products. And PDF has supported XML for a number of years."
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The CKK judgement was suppoosed to be released after the close of markets to stave off a run of share transfers before the weekend.
According to él Register the report was emailed out 2 hours before time, which meant trading could happen for those fortunate enough to get such a mail before everyone else. Slashdot even reported it _before_ time.
http://theregister.co.uk/content/4/27910.html
Also interesting is the analysis
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I'm no fan of Adobe. They abuse a dominant position, too (take Photoshop's most recent changes with "improving" tiffs).
However, saying all HTML needs to match PDF is page breaks is like saying all a Pinto needs to take on a Porsche is not to explode.
PDFs are entirely editable in many applications. They can include font data. They include everything needed to output cleanly on a variety of output devices. They are made to look the same on screen as they will on output devices. They solve many of the main problems with delivering files to press.
HTML is markup. PDF is page description. There is an enormous difference.
-j
I forget what 8 was for.
1. which is now 99% geared towards IE
That is false. 99% of the web does not require IE. Very few sites actually require IE. Mostly clueless idiots.
Some recent surveys on browsers indicate that IE is used by about 96% of users. That's not 99, but I think it's sufficiently large that any web site developer will insure first that their pages look good in IE, then maybe Netscape, if they have time. The W3 standards are all fine and good, but the de facto standard is defined by how IE behaves. MS owns that behavior and can change it at will.
2. Um... please explain how something that's free can get any cheaper.
Adobe charges money for its PDF creation products. They are not free. MS is competing with them. Therefore, Adobe's products will get cheaper or Adobe will lose the market. Imagine that.
I think distribution of a PDF competitor as part of a default distribution of Windows or Office would kill off Adobe's version of PDF in much the same manner that bundling of IE with Windows killed off Netscape, despite the latter being reduced to zero price. It was more hassle for people to download some large binary from Netscape over their modems and to try to disentangle IE's tentacles, that most people just caved in and accepted IE as their browser. It's been demonstrated that zero price is not enough to compete with Microsoft.
MS will embrace Adobe's PDF idea, extend it using XDocs, and then let Adobe's PDF wither as Office defaults to output XDoc instead of PDF. And wither it will, because Office, too, is used by about 90% of the office productivity suite marketplace.
When a desperate Adobe offers an Office plug-in for free download that enables one to write PDF, they'll get the same rousing response as Netscape did for free downloads of its application.
I don't want to belabor these points because how MS operates is well-known by now.
That said, however, the basic technical ideas of both PDF and of XDoc are good.
Publishing their respective specifications and letting an international standards body ratify those standards is a great idea. I would move to XDoc from PDF if it were technically-sound, completely and openly published, and ratified by an international standards organization.
Companies, either Adobe or Microsoft, trying to own a standard and use it to wring the most dollars out of it, simply by tripping up the competition with a deft change of the standard is not a good idea.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
It's in the developer builds.
Under UNIX based systems where spadmin, the printer administration program, uses ghostscript, ps2pdf, etc. We're working on a new 'create PDF' feature on all the platforms we support, you can find it in the 'developer' builds today.
The full document is Here
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA