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.""

Comments

OpenOffice/StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenOffice/StarOffice produce very nice pdf-files, wonder if that has anything to do with it.

Re:OpenOffice/StarOffice

[doublem]

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

Monopoly Abuse?

[otisaardvark]

Surely this sort of thing is exactly what the US DOJ is avidly against - using overwhelming market share (in, say, office products) to gain overwhelming market share in other sectors (wysiwyg "electronic paper"). Hopefully the EU anti-competition measures will be more stringent than those in the US.

Re:Monopoly Abuse?

[Mocenigo]

Yes, but people in the american administration is not happy about the "europan" attitude towards the behaviour of an allegedly "free market". The EU stance is that there is no free market if market is allowed to create a monopoly. In physics this is called a singularity, and Microsoft is indeed a kind of black hole. It engulfs everything, and distorts and ultimately breaks what gets near to it. I am quite happy that we (well, actually, France) also have nukes: GWB will not treat us like Iraqis. After all, we are becoming a "rebel market" in Bush' eyes...

Re:Monopoly Abuse?

[shani]

You're completely right. I have always considered us (europe) to be good allies of the US, but in these absurd times, where the US government is getting almost as bad and rotten as the USSR was in its worst times (Stalin) you can only be glad that we have nukes of our own.

What are you talking about? The USSR invaded countries that tried to implement a political system that it didn't like. Why, it would defend any Middle Eastern country that would ally with it, regardless of the brutality of it's government. And don't forget that they invaded Afghanistan!!!

Um. Never mind.

(To be fair, by most reports Stalin killed 10 million of his own people. He made a secret pact with Hitler to split Poland, and was a real bad guy. I hate George W. as much as the next expat, but let's not get carried away.)

Re:Monopoly Abuse?

[rnd()]

This may be the drop that washes the U.S. recession into a depression.

I hope you're not serious. Can you please explain to us how having two products that do basically the same thing competing for market share is a bad thing?

Before you start worrying too much about how having a competetor to PDF will kill the economy, think about what will actually happen: 1) Consumers will save money because competition will drive the price of the technology down, and 2) those consumers will have a little extra cash in their pockets that they can use to purchase other goods or buy stock, or just save for a rainy day.

I'm sorry, but I don't think Adobe is the cornerstone of the US economy. If their market for electronic documents (aka PDF) shrinks, then they may have to cut a few jobs or sit down and figure out how to make their product more competetive. Meanwhile, the rest of us are saving money and getting a better product.

BTW, have you looked at the price that Adobe charges for Acrobat (not the reader, which is free)? If you want to use PDF you are paying more for it than the copy of Windowz you're running it on.

Re:Monopoly Abuse?

[Safety Cap]

Consumers will save money because competition will drive the price of the technology down

Um... please explain how something that's free can get any cheaper. Reader is free, and the PDF spec API is open - there are some freeware products that create PDF already.

The danger (as always with things Micro$oft) is that they will embrace, extend, and then exterminate. Witness the web, which is now 99% geared towards IE (which has YET to implement W3C standards).

Re:Monopoly Abuse?

[Hal-9001]

Because Microsoft is planning to, and has a good chance of, bludgeoning PDF to death with their overwhelming market share in productivity software, not with the technical merits of their product. If that's not anti-competitive abuse of monopoly power, I don't know what is.

Re:Monopoly Abuse?

[TheConfusedOne]

Let's look at your arguments here.

1) Consumers will save money:
Bzzt. PDF Viewer is free. Additionally, the format for PDF is published so that people can write both viewers and creators for free.

2) Consumers will have extra money:
Bzzt. Again wrong. You have PDF which is still free versus a feature that will be included in the latest version of Office, which isn't free. Additionally, XDocs competes with the Forms feature in PDF, not with PDF in general.

So, have you looked at the price MS charges for Office? Oh yeah, in addition you'll need to be running Win 2K SP3 or XP in order to run this version of Office.

Now on to your straw man. The poster wasn't saying that the fall of PDF was going to destroy the economy. He was stating that the settlement handed to MS will give them carte blanche to wage full scale war against any and all "competitors" in the computer industry.

THAT could lead to further damage to the economy as we see how MS prices things once they get control of the market segment.

Re:Monopoly Abuse?

[4of12]

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.

Re:Monopoly Abuse?

[rnd()]

It looks like you fell into the trap:

1) Consumers will save money: Bzzt. PDF Viewer is free. Additionally, the format for PDF is published so that people can write both viewers and creators for free.

If it's free, then why does anyone care what Microsoft does. Do we really think that consumers are stupid enough to pay for something when there's a perfectly acceptable free alternative? Microsoft won't sell much of it's product unless it is vastly superior, with all of the free alternatives out there... :) Oh, wait... some people don't consider the 13 hours it took them to get the 'free' version working to constitute a costless endevour.

2) Consumers will have extra money: Bzzt. Again wrong. You have PDF which is still free versus a feature that will be included in the latest version of Office, which isn't free. Additionally, XDocs competes with the Forms feature in PDF, not with PDF in general.

Ok... you've said it again, there is a great free alternative out there. Consumers must be very naive. Look, most people I know aren't going to pay $800 for the latest version of Office unless it benefits them in some way that they foresee to have value greater than the $800 they're spending.

So, have you looked at the price MS charges for Office? Oh yeah, in addition you'll need to be running Win 2K SP3 or XP in order to run this version of Office.

Yes, see the $800 figure above.

Now on to your straw man. The poster wasn't saying that the fall of PDF was going to destroy the economy. He was stating that the settlement handed to MS will give them carte blanche to wage full scale war against any and all "competitors" in the computer industry.

The thing you're missing, and the thing that most people who are heavily emotionally invested in the debate miss, is that nobody is being forced to use anything. If half of the hours spent on Slashdot arguing about this were dedicated to competing with Microsoft, GNU/Linux would have won at least a year or two ago.

Saying that there's a monopoly is really a way to cloud the issue, becuase most people have been taught since the third grade that monopolies are bad. Anti-trust legislation is intended to protect consumers. It is necessary to show how consumers have been harmed in order to successfully enact anti-trust penalties against a company.

Think about it. If you start a company you look around and see that you have competetors. Your competetors spend every waking moment trying to edge your company out. You do the same. It's called competition. Businesses don't gain anything by running neck-and-neck with the next guy, they need to develop as much advantage as possible. In fact, business is actually a competition to see who can have the fewest all-around competetors, which is why companies always try to expand their offerings and services. This is called competetive differentiation. The more competetive advantage you have, the more money you can make which you can then spend on innovation to further that advantage. Anti-trust law exists because sometimes consumers are harmed when one company becomes too successful. Note, I said sometimes, not always.

Suppose Microsoft had not been very successful but managed to retain some maintenance business based on that original MS-DOS contract. Would the world be a better place? Who knows. Would Linus have had that original MINIX system to tinker with? By saying monopolies are always bad, you are applying no critical thought to the issue.

THAT could lead to further damage to the economy as we see how MS prices things once they get control of the market segment.

So again you make the "consumers are dumb" argument. If Windows + Office cost $2000, I bet a LOT more companies would be using Linux/OpenOffice. It's kind of like the issue of oil vs. alternative fuel. We would all like to be able to use alternatively powered vehicles, but right now Oil is just cheaper b/c there is an existing infrastructure (gas pumps everyhwere). Economically, Microsoft stuff is cheaper than Linux, because of the advantages gained by the fact that everyone uses it. When that changes, Linux will win. One can already see some effects of Linux's success: Microsoft is moving to more and more open standards, IBM has embraced Linux, and there are fewer and fewer reasons not to use linux.

You don't have to grow your hair long and develop a festering hatred for Microsoft in order to believe that Linux will win. You just have to believe that most people wouldn't mind saving some money and that markets actually work.

Re:Monopoly Abuse?

[DickBreath]

Can you please explain to us how having two products that do basically the same thing competing for market share is a bad thing?

I'll give some examples of how competition can be either good or bad for consumers.

Good for consumers:
(depending on your point of view)

• Several different brands of toasters that all accept the same kind of bread, and plug into the same electrical outlet.
• Many different kinds of PC hardware with interchangeable parts.
• Many different software programs that read and write the PDF format. (You can argue about quality of the free ones, but that is entirely beside the point.)

Bad for consumers:
(depending on your point of view, whether or not you have a monopoly on a related technology)

• Several different brands of toasters that only accept Microsoft bread, and only run on Burns brand electricity. (With due respect to Mr. Burns' nuclear plant.)
• Many different kinds of PC hardware all incompatible (Apple II, TRS-80, Commodore 64, Kaypro, Exidy Sorceror, etc....)
• Two different standards for electronic paper. One open, with commercial and freely available software. The other closed, proprietary, encrypted, protected by the DMCA, designed by a monopolist, and only readable on a platform that costs an artificially high price, and only writable from productivity software that costs an artificially high price.

The Microsoft shills can say all they want about how the second set of examples are so good for everyone. Now it is possible that XDoc is just another name for PDF, and Microsoft intends the type of competition illustrated by my first set of examples.

Guessing which type of competition Microsoft intends is an exercise left for the reader. (Hint: you are allowed to examine Microsoft's past behavior to aid you in forming a conclusion. Be sure to explain your reasoning.)

(Extra credit: be the first to point out that I've managed to use "competition" and "Microsoft" in the same sentence!)

Re:Monopoly Abuse?

[Dun Malg]

To be fair, by most reports Stalin killed 10 million of his own people

And to be accurate, Stalin killed about 43 million between 1939 and 1953. Take a look at R.J. Rummel's web site for accurate analyses of historical acts of democide.

Re:Monopoly Abuse?

[fwarren]

"Can you please explain to us how having two products that do basically the same thing competing for market share is a bad thing?"

Sure, glad I could help

Past performance is the best indicator of how something will perform in the future

Look at MicroSofts track record.

• I know we have all benefited from MicroSoft telling PC manufactures that they cannot purchase OEM copies of windows at a discount if "the free market forces" of consumers having a chose to boot multiple OS, preloaded on a machine they purchase.
• Then with a strangle hold on PC"s that are purchased for home and business, a wordprocessor is a must. So let's bundle in at discount MicroSoft Office for OEM's installs. This surely won't hurt wordperfect. Competition is good.
• Let's all shout "Hurray" for the free market, MicroSoft will make a java runtime engine, and we know it will be compatible, because they signed an agreement with Sun.

Need I go on? Need any more examples?

Yes, competiton is good, But when a Monopoly uses it's power to further maintain it as being a monopoly, that is not considered being "competivie" and good for the consumer.

While I will admit that as times change, all monopolies lose that strangehold power (who want's to be railbarron?). In the meantime, with price fixing, genuine invovation being destroyed before it is brought to the market, and new "features" being added, not because they are a benefit to the user, but because they further the interest of the monoploy.

Case in point, when the new version of office comes out, it will only run on Y2k with SP3 or on XP. All news systems will have to be loaded with XP, and the new version office will be the only version available.

At this point, business will end up with a mix of "new office' and "old office", which will not be compatible. They will be forced to upgrade, because it is good for MicroSoft.

If MicroSoft was not a monopoly, abusing it's power, there would be real free market competion, and the consumer could, at cost, swith to different word processor that does not lock them in like that. However, lets face it, as all the MS zelots out there constantly remind us, neither WordPerfect or OpenOffice are viable alternatives for most business that are entrenched MS Office users.

Competition is good (and possible), when you are not competing against a monopoly.

Bart Bucks are not legal tender

Re:Monopoly Abuse?

[Oestergaard]

What you really should do is to use PostScript.

Why? Well it's basically what PDF is (PDF was made to be a successor to PS and has some extensions here and there, but let's not get all hung up about that for now).

You can *copy* a PostScript file to any reasonable printer produced in the last 10 years or so. And it will print - correctly and beautifully.

You have excellent interoperability - all UNIX and GNU/Linux systems will work out-of-the-box with PostScript.

For Windows you have "Ghostview" for windows (use google) as an alternative to the Acrobat reader. For printing, well define a standard PostScript printer in windows, and make it print to a file. Set up, for example, an Apple Laserwriter (with Postscript support) and point it to c:\temp\output.ps - voila! There's excellent interoperable standards-conformat PostScript output for you, to share with the world.

Why PDF was made, I never understood. But ok, people seem to use it, and it doesn't *remove* functionality that PostScript has (AFAIK).

xDoc? I see as little need for that, as I did for PDF. PostScript *still* does everything you could possibly want when it comes to simply exchanging pages of film-ready documents.

Both reading and authoring is available for free on any reasonable OS (LaTeX + ghostview) and in Windows (Word/whatever + ghostview/acrobat-something)

PDF Files arn't easily modifiable.

[ruckc]

XDocs are based around the XML specification. Hence, wouldn't they be easily modifiable?

Re:PDF Files arn't easily modifiable.

[nizo]

The question is, will Microsoft invent their own "standard" brand of XML. I suppose they could follow the XML spec, but then again I don't hear any pigs flying overhead at the moment.....

Re:PDF Files arn't easily modifiable.

[sql*kitten]

XDocs are based around the XML specification. Hence, wouldn't they be easily modifiable?

Let me just see if I understand Slashdot's position on all of this:

• 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
  

So my question to the Slashbots is, will you criticize everything Microsoft does - even if it's something you wanted them to do - just because it's Microsoft? Or is there a serious technical reason that this product is inferior?

Because, y'know, the best product should always get the support of the market. That's why Excel is so popular.

Re:PDF Files arn't easily modifiable.

[khuber]

Just because you use XML doesn't mean that your format is open/accessible. XML is just a low level file format that requires a language to be useful. I mean binary is an open format because all computers understand 1s and 0s right? No...

PDF isn't a very good format either because Adobe controls the spec. It isn't open.

Looking at Microsoft's XDocs FAQ since I can't get to the article, it appears to be geared primarily towards creating forms so it's not obvious how it competes directly. I never liked PDF forms and they seems to be used rarely.

The evilness of XDocs depends on whether you will be able to easily use them without Office. PDF has wide support on many platforms.

-Kevin

Re:PDF Files arn't easily modifiable.

[rant-mode-on]

• Because, y'know, the best product should always get the support of the market. That's why Excel is so popular.

But why is Excel the best? Is it because they just made a better product and everybody else gave up because they couldn't innovate? Or is it because Microsoft crushed the opposition by exploiting their monopoly?

I think you'll find that Microsoft ensured that the "best product" never got made, because they knew it wouldn't be theirs.

Re:PDF Files arn't easily modifiable.

[Nerant]

One. Slashdot is a forum, not a united voice.

Two. XML is good, because it's a format that parsers have been written for, so developers don't have to write yet another file format parser, but merely write some additional logic ontop of an existing XML parser.

Three. Microsoft using XML isn't bad. However, given the history of their actions with regards to standards, and common sense, it is highly probable they'll find some way to subvert XML into some bizarre format that only MS Office can handle. This is what some of us at Slashdot feel will happen. XML isn't bad, but Microsoft doesn't have a track record for following standards. They do however, have the high score for subverting them.

Re:PDF Files arn't easily modifiable.

[DF5JT]

| * 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.

Re:PDF Files arn't easily modifiable.

[pubjames]

Let me just see if I understand Slashdot's position on all of this:
[..]
Now Microsoft want to use XML too... but that's also bad

It's simple. The people who post to Slashdot generally don't trust Microsoft. And they've good reason not to. Even when they say they are using a particular format, they deliberately do stuff to make it incompatible with anything that isn't from Microsoft.

Try this simple test. Open a document in Microsoft Word 2000. Save as HTML. Look at the HTML. You will find yourself looking at something that is unlike any other HTML you'll ever come across.

So when Microsoft say that XDocs is in XML format, it doesn't really mean it will be in XML format, just something they themselves call XML format.

Microsoft hasn't done anything recently that has convinced me that I can trust what they say. So I don't. The mistrust runs so deep that I, and I expect may other people who post on Slashdot, will be absolutely amazed if we open an XDoc and see something like this:

<title style="heading1">This is a title</title>

rather than (and this is a small extract from a very simple document in Word 2000 saved as "html"):

<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:data>08D0C9EA79F9BACE118C8200AA004BA90B02000000 080000000D0000005F0054006F006300320034003200350038 003400330031000000</w:data>
</xml><![endif]--></s pan><!--[if supportFields]><span style='color:windowtext;
display:none;mso-hide:sc reen;text-decoration:none;text-underline:none'><sp an
style='mso-element:field-end'></span></span><! [endif]--></a></span><o:p></o:p></p&g t ;

Re:PDF Files arn't easily modifiable.

[e8johan]

If nothing else, they'll still f**k up the format by adding links to ActiveX components etc. so that you'll need to have Office installed to view properly.

What is wrong with a plain old PS, you can even embed EPS files into PS files. Has always worked, will always work. I use Framemaker + xfig + matlab for my documents, and this far, I've never had any problems. As for PS portability, that's what ps2pdf is for :)

Re:PDF Files arn't easily modifiable.

[larien]

I believe the saying goes:

Microsoft follow standards the same way fish follow migrating caribou

Re:PDF Files arn't easily modifiable.

[guybarr]

I think you'll find that Microsoft ensured that the "best product" never got made, because they knew it wouldn't be theirs.

Nope. They have good devs just as other firms. the "best product" wouldn't be made because MS will not be able to charge for an upgrade later.

This is not an MS-specific tactic, many SW firms use it, but MS has used it most successfully, so far.

problem with this kind of tactic is that eventually it WILL backfire.

Re:PDF Files arn't easily modifiable.

[joshua404]

So my question to the Slashbots is, will you criticize everything Microsoft does - even if it's something you wanted them to do - just because it's Microsoft? Or is there a serious technical reason that this product is inferior?

Not to mention the irony of the Slashbots rallying around Adobe, the company responsible for having Dmitry tossed into prison.

Re:PDF Files arn't easily modifiable.

[Rogerborg]

Ouch. Has that got worse since Word '97 then? I get this for a one line file, first in Word '97:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="Microsoft Word 97">
<TITLE>The quick brown fox leapt over the lazy dog</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>

<FO NT SIZE=2><P>The quick brown fox leapt over the lazy dog.</P></FONT></BODY>
</HTML& g t;

Then in Open Office 1.0.1:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="CONTENT-TYPE" CONTENT="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<TITLE></TITLE>
<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="OpenOffice.org 1.0.1 (Win32)">
<META NAME="CREATED" CONTENT="20021105;13015155">
<META NAME="CHANGED" CONTENT="20021105;13030129">
<STYLE>
<!--
@page { margin: 2cm }
-->
</STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY LANG="en-US">
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">The
quick brown fox leapt over the lazy dog.</FONT></P>
</BODY>
</HTML&g t ;

The slight mangling by the Slashdot <ecode> interpreter aside, I'm frankly not exactly enamoured with either of them. HTML is an appaling format for a WYSIWYG document. The native zipped XML produced by OpenOffice is better, but (unzipped) weighs in at 15,172 bytes for 43 characters of content. I think the only reasonable conclusion is that word processer formats are the epitome of a good compromise; they leave everybody unhappy.

Re:PDF Files arn't easily modifiable.

[mgibbs]

:-) Sorry, this just reminded me of a Simpson's quote:

Shop Owner: We sell forbidden objects from places men fear to tread. We also sell frozen yogurt, which I call "Frogurt"!
Homer tells the owner that he is looking for a present for his son's birthday. The owner hands him a talking Krusty doll.
Shop Owner: Take this object, but beware it carries a terrible curse!
Homer: [worried] Ooooh, that's bad.
Shop Owner: But it comes with a free Frogurt!
Homer: [relieved] That's good.
Shop Owner: The Frogurt is also cursed.
Homer: [worried] That's bad.
Shop Owner: But you get your choice of topping!
Homer: [relieved] That's good.
Shop Owner: The toppings contains Potassium Benzoate.
Homer: [stares]
Shop Owner: That's bad.
Homer: Can I go now?

Re:PDF Files arn't easily modifiable.

[pjrc]

If PDF isn't an open format, then how did Derek Noonburg create XPDF, a free (GPL) PDF viewer for unix/X11 that works well on almost all PDF files, even ones with encryption.

It wasn't always fully open... I've followed xpdf for many years. In the early days, Derek could not show encrypted PDF files because Adobe would not release specs on the encryption . Long ago, xpdf printed a message with contact info for someone at Adobe, saying "contact them and tell them to make good on their claim that PDF is an open format" (or something like that... it's been years). Apparantly there was quite a bit of tension between Adobe and Derek, and people from Adobe claimed (lied) that xpdf could not show those files because Derek was a bad programmer. Finally, Adobe relented and released full specs including the encryption. This probably never would have occured if it weren't for Derek Noonburg and his xpdf program (and Adobe's initial refusal to release a linux version of acrobat reader).

Ok, so microsoft trides to do this now

[mrpuffypants]

But I see that this, unlike browsers a few years back, as being pretty damn entrenched in the business and graphics world.

With browsers 6 years ago there was very little loyalty, so MSIE could move in before everyone realized just how powerful MS was going to be over Netscape and the other companies involved in browsers.

But with Adobe Acrobat we're talking about a refined and popular format. Actually, Acrobat is one of the best file ideas out there, IMHO. It is perfectly cross platform, well designed, and (neglecting to note the whole russian programmer fiasco) Adobe has a good business model behind it.

MS's only strong point could be integration, like they offer with all of their other 'solutions', but Adobe already has great integration wih their own suite of programs and even with Microsoft Word.

They should call it Bob...

Re:Ok, so microsoft trides to do this now

[evilviper]

Acrobat is one of the best file ideas out there

Bah! I have some issues with PDFs.

A gzipped postscript file is always smaller than a PDF. Add bzip2 compression, and it's even smaller.

Neither PS or PDF can be modified significantly or easilly. Even with Acrobat, you can change some text, but you can't move anything around.

Similar to the previous, you can't easilly parse and modify it, non-interactively. If I want to change something in all my HTML files, I have no problem. To do it in PDF is a nightmare.

What I think we need is an HTML archive. That way, you can distribute a single file that contains one or more HTML files, along with all the images, CSS, et al. It could simply be a zip or tar file. And, of course, browers and editors need to understand how to fully utilize that archive. Right now, if you delete an image from a page, it doesn't remove the image file; that would need to change.

The only thing HTML needs to match PDF is a page-break character, so you can closely control the page layout (if you want to), and someone else could easilly change that layout you wanted, for their own needs/preferences.

That would be easy to modify interactively, easy to script/automate changes. Easy to create, easy to distribute, print, etc. Everything that PDF is, and everything that it isn't.

Re:Ok, so microsoft trides to do this now

[elvum]

Neither PS or PDF can be modified significantly or easilly. Even with Acrobat, you can change some text, but you can't move anything around.

That's the whole point of Acrobat - it's designed to replace printing out hardcopies, so editing is limited to the kind of thing you'd do with a bottle of tipp-ex. You're not supposed to delete the original document when you make the pdf...

The only thing HTML needs to match PDF is a page-break character, so you can closely control the page layout (if you want to), and someone else could easilly change that layout you wanted, for their own needs/preferences.

What about cryptographic signing? Portable font embedding? Exact cross-platform reproduction on screen and in hard copy? PDF documents are good enough to send straight to press; html was designed for a completely different purpose (*reasonable* reproduction on a variety of user agents).

Umm...

[Black Perl]

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.

Re:Umm...

[G-funk]

SSSHHHH! Don't spoil the slashdot fud tantrum! Geeze, next you'll be saying you can turn off palladium, and that you don't _have_ to listen to celine dion, even if you own a mac.

Re:Umm...

[selectspec]

Not to mention this is a good thing, because with xdocs MS is porting their MS Word.doc format to XML which will greatly increase interoperability on word docs.

Re:Umm...

[Raphael]

selectspec wrote:

with xdocs MS is porting their MS Word.doc format to XML which will greatly increase interoperability on word docs

This conclusion is unfortunately wrong. XML code can be just as proprietary as any binary code, unless the corresponding Schema or DTD is published together with good instructions describing how to use it. Without this, then having XML or having some unstructured binary file does not make a big difference, except for the fact that the XML code is human-readable (readable does not mean understandable).

XML can help the interoperability between products, to some extent. But only if the DTDs are public so that the meaning of the XML code can be decyphered.

Note that there are already a number of MS Word import/export filters that are not too bad, despite the fact that the file format is binary (or RTF) and the specs are not published. I do not think that XML will help them in any way. On the contrary, one could think that this radical change in file format may just be another way to delay the competition.

Yes, but...

[melonman]

...surely the issue is not whether or not it's Microsoft, but whether or not the technology actually works.

IMHO, postscript/PDF is one of the most ingenious formats around. It is extremely portable, handles fonts, vector graphics and (perhaps to a lesser extent) bitmaps wonderfully, and, if used sensible, can be extremely compact. And just about every typsetting machine on the planet uses it.

So for Microsoft to win this one, they are going to need to produce a pretty innovative product, for which the precedents are not good...

Re:Yes, but...

[Per Wigren]

...surely the issue is not whether or not it's Microsoft,

No, it's about how open it is, if it's portable, patented, if 3rd parties can implement it, and things like that.

but whether or not the technology actually works.

If it's not portable I can't use it.
If it's not open, Free Software developers can't implement it in the programs I use.
Then it's not working. Not for me at least.

Re:Yes, but...

[Stary]

Is PDF 'free' in the free beer sense?

Yes. From the PDF specification:

Adobe gives permission to anyone to:

• Prepare files in which the file content conforms to the Portable Document Format.
• Write drivers and applications that produce output represented in the Portable Document Format.
• Write software that accepts input in the form of the Portable Document Format and displays the results, prints the results, or otherwise interprets a file represented in the Portable Document Format.
• Copy Adobe's copyrighted list of operators and data structures, as well as the PDF sample code and PostScript language Function definitions in the written specification, to the extent necessary to use the Portable Document Format for the above purposes.

Will XDocs support 'ALL' the features in PDF?

[foniksonik]

For instance:

-Transparency
-Full compression via JPEG, ZIP, LZW, GIF, PNG, etc
-Font sampling, ie: reduced character sets
-Full interactivity, media support (audio, video, forms)
-Seamless support by industry standard vector editors... think Illustrator, Freehand

Look at OS X... the whole damn GUI is rendered via PDF then spit out as an OpenGL texture... will XDocs compete with that level of sophistication?

Interesting but I doubt it will be a "PDF Killer".

Maybe it will be an alternate digital media format (most likely with some insane DRM/Palladium tie in).

Re:Will XDocs support 'ALL' the features in PDF?

[fishnuts]

It will be a PDF Killer when they include it in every single MS product. IIS will have modules to generate and process them on-the-fly, IE7 will have the Viewer, Office will have the Publisher, Exchange will have its own interface, of course, and since they'll certainly be wrapping it in a layer of DRM, the DMCA will prevent anyone from reverse-engineering it to produce a compatible Viewer for NS/Moz/Konq/Opera/Lynx or *insert-your-non-MS-OS-here*.

And since this idea wasn't mentioned at all during the DOJ Antitrust trials, DOJ probably wont bother touching it.

XDOC == XUL + WebServices for Office.Net

[palad1]

After reading about xdocs last week, we came to the following conclusion that XForm is in no way a end-user 'static' document format.

What it does is 'just' provide an link between a document and databases through .net WinForms embeded in an office doc, talking to a database via a webservice.

What does that mean?

Well, now the office suite will be able to do the same thing as XUL+Soap in moz, in a much nicer way for the end user [remember, word _IS_ the computer for most persons].

I think that's a sweet move, as long as the webservices talking to XForms are not crippled and accessible from Moz, everyone will be happy... and as long as it's not yet another vb-only scripting language :

XXX

[lovebyte]

MS Xdocs
MS eXchange
MS Xbox
MS Windows XP

What next?
MS Xwindow?
MS Xnotfree86?

Re:XXX

[commodoresloat]

What next?

MS OS X.

XDocs might threaten pdf in workflow environments

[Jjaks]

XDocs might be a threat to pdf in the field of online forms processing, as described in this zdnet article. Today pdf is used extensively in organizations that administer large quantities of paper forms that are sent to them.

But I don't think it can threaten pdf in other areas, because pdf is very, very established as the standard for online read-only documents. For instance, when I was looking for a new job earlier this year, I used Open Office to generate pdf files containing my applications that I sent to employers, and I didn't get a single complaint that they couldn't read it.

Shocking, just shocking

[blankmange]

And who out there is genuinely surprised by this move??? My only surprise is how long it took for MS to move on .pdf.

Personally, I find .pdf files a pain - they are memory intensive and usually the machine I am working on doesn't have Acrobat loaded on it (already noted here).

If MS can make this a simpler and more ubiquitous process, then so be it.... Adobe has a hell of lot more going for it than Acrobat - why didn't they just sell it to MS for a profit and be done with it? Adobe makes money and their Acrobat becomes a defacto standard.

Re:Stock took a hit?

[commodoresloat]

No doubt. How is MS still this powerful, that the mere breath of possible vaporware is enough to send investors scurrying away from the competition? People have seen through their shenanigans for years, have even demonstrated some of them (though perhaps the least noxious of them) in open court, and yet when they say jump the only thing we can say is how high? It's pathetic.

Re:Just a side note

[e8johan]

Sure IE will come with support for it, and of course that support is not optional, you'll end up downloading and installing it no matter what (as long as you insist on using Windows).

As Office evolves it will be more and more integrated into IE and even though IE is not required by the OS, it will be required by Office. I believe that the recent ruling only concerned their dominance in the OS area, not in productive software (i.e. Office), but I may be wrong about that.

So bloody typical MS

[selderrr]

can anyone remember the last time they actually came up with something innovative ? All they do is examine markets, pick one with only one large competitor and rewrite the software in an inferior way.

Fortunately, there's a big difference with netscape : netscape was a small company, the web was still in its infancy. Adobes pdf market (press) on the other hand is a billion dollar industry and adobe has quite a tad of experience with lawsuits. I doubt they'll just sit and scream murder...

Re:So bloody typical MS

[SensitiveMale]

can anyone remember the last time they actually came up with something innovative ?

Yes, I can.

They invented the gui. no wait...

They invented the PDA. no wait...

They invented the little 'x' in the corner to close the window. no wait...

They invented the mouse. no wait...

They invented the task bar. no wait...

They invented a multi-user OS. no wait...

They invented their IP stack. no wait...

They invented multi-media on the computer. no wait...

They invented the internet browser. no wait...

They invented new ways to extend monopolies and even when busted they never get punished. They only have to promise not to break the law in the same way in the future.

YUP, that is what they invented.

Re:So bloody typical MS

[NeuroManson]

There's a common misperception in regards to what "innovation" means. Most companies that are not making a new and unique product depend largely on taking preexisting concepts and designs and either finding improvements or enhancements to said design, often creating their own proprietary applications.

For example, one could easily accuse Adobe of the exact same theft of concept:

(1)They patented Postscript type as a way to allow desktop publishing to advance to a point where it could compete with conventional printing shops, while similarly giving themselves a near monopoly on the desktop with applications such as Pagemaker. Speaking of which...

Pagemaker was a desktop publishing app that basically put Adobe on the map, despite it's being released at a time when there were multiple companies making various flavors of SOHO publishing solutions. Other than the GUI and certain key tools, it wasn't really that innovative, and Adobe can easily be accused of "ripping off" other software companies.

Also, the same applies to Photoshop. One could easily claim as well that it was almost a direct rip of MacPaint when it first came out. Once again, other than the GUI and key tools, it wasn't that innovative, there were hundreds of paint/edit programs on the market. Similarly, the same applies to Freehand (surprisingly, the sole piece of software that's not innovative at all, and still recieving ample competition from Corel).

Ahhh, and then we move to the PDF format, which ironically was an application meant to provide an alternative to rich text Word documents. Not exactly any innovation there either, in fact, far more bloated and complicated than even Word could ever hope to be.

So Microsoft made their own "PDF Killer"... It isn't like they haven't ripped off other companies before, the implied fear of Adobe somehow losing to Microsoft in a market where they have a considerable share is ridiculous.

Personally, I dislike PDF, especially in terms of bloat and loading delays in browsers. It's ridiculous, to have to wait an extra 5-10 seconds for Acrobat to load (and another 10-15 seconds just to load the document into the browser, just to read a tech sheet. It's gotten increasingly slower as they add idiotic things like update scans that bog the system down with redundant inquiries, and the software steers further away from what it was originally meant to do: Read PDF documents.

Now as for real innovation, don't hold your breath hoping for it. The market currently depends on a very limited range of hardware, and as long as they're locked into established standards, they won't truly become innovative. Add to that the hobbling of VC funded "innovations", which never take off due to the incapacity of CEOs to look at the big picture (as evidenced from IBM's first taste of the microprocessor, without the slightest idea of what to do with it).

At least until they learn to, and this should be the mantra: Invent.

Re:So bloody typical MS

[sh4de]

Pagemaker was a desktop publishing app that basically put Adobe on the map, despite it's being released at a time when there were multiple companies making various flavors of SOHO publishing solutions. Other than the GUI and certain key tools, it wasn't really that innovative, and Adobe can easily be accused of "ripping off" other software companies.

Uhm, Pagemaker was originally made by Aldus. Adobe got Pagemaker by buying Aldus and killing off the company. Now Adobe is trying to kill Pagemaker itself with their Indesign.

Also, the same applies to Photoshop. One could easily claim as well that it was almost a direct rip of MacPaint when it first came out. Once again, other than the GUI and key tools, it wasn't that innovative, there were hundreds of paint/edit programs on the market.

Photoshop succeeded because it was made by photographers (the Knoll brothers) for photographers. It could handle CMYK separations, crucial for any prepress work.

Re:Stock took a hit?

[NightRain]

No doubt. How is MS still this powerful, that the mere breath of possible vaporware is enough to send investors scurrying away from the competition?

That says as much about the sad state of the way the stock market works as it does about MS. If people believe that other people believe this will affect Adobe, then they will bail out before those 'other people' do. This of course causes other people to bail out, and the next thing you know, the bottom has dropped out of the stock.

Ray

Re:Just a side note

[Jugalator]

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.

Re:Sorry boys

[Captain Large Face]

>blockquote>I have to go and install some v.slow and large application to load them.

How is this any different from Word Documents?

Re:Sorry boys

[Mr_Silver]

but I find .pdf files a *major* ballache. I often find the computer I'm on doesn't support loading them so I have to go and install some v.slow and large application to load them.

I had this issue too on a laptop at the weekend. Thankfully I was connected to the internet so I just plugged the URL into google and it provided an option to convert it to HTML.

Of course, it's not exactly the best conversion in the world, but at least you can read what is in the file.

Re:Stock took a hit?

[ProfessorPuke]

Don't call it sad! Look at it as your own chance to pick up bargain shares!

Immediate Stock Hit?

[devnullkac]

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.

I'm not buying into this...

[iamwhatiseem]

.. having been in the design field for 19 years. When PDF's came along it was the best thing since sliced bread. ALL design software worth anything supports PDF's now. They will not support the new MS one, at least not for quite awhile. And with Adobe InDesign climbing the ranks, I don't see any immediate threat.
Also there have been very FEW viruses that infect PDF's, imagine the viruses that will be written for M$'s version.

Workflow

[panurge]

A lot of small publishing operations are only now in the process of moving to a PDF-based workflow. I can just see the big print people and the rip engine designers being absolutely delighted at the prospect of another "standard" (we need a word to describe these non-cooperative standards, one that will get through Net Nanny) to spread FUD.

In effect, Microsoft depends on its users - largely technology ignorant - to push its technologies into areas of resistance regardless of the problems it causes. It is so like the old IBM that one can only assume the managers read IBM internal memos before bedtime. Except that IBM had better R&D, a wider range of products, and a captive market for mainframes...and it still ended up in trouble.

Re:Sorry boys

[sakaruk]

But surely the ideal solution would be for M$ Word to support PDF docs. That would please all users.

Re:Why not use DjVu?

[adolf]

The DjVu folks seem to have created a very fine format for the storage of scanned documents of random layout. It uses space efficiently, and produces good-looking (though imperfect - think JPEG) results. It's the only way I know of to preserve the look of a paper document without throwing away vast amounts of storage.

But, as far as I can tell, that's where the fun stops. AFAIK, it doesn't handle vector graphics, and has nothing to offer over PDF for strictly digital documents. In the digital world, PDF produces perfect results, automatically.

OTOH, PDF is not geared toward scanned documents. I've seen a lot of examples of, say, scanned datasheets in PDF; all of them were bad.

I thus submit that each respective format has its own well-defined niche, and fills it admirably.

Ghostview certainly could support DjVu, if someone wrote the appropriate code for ghostscript. That it supports GIF, JPEG, PNG and PDF would tend to indicate that it's well within the scope of the software's design parameters.

At the analysts party...

[Qbertino]

And now, Ladys and Gentlemen,
"...a new Microsoft PDF-killer technology..."
PDF-Killer. Yeah! New Technology! WOOOOP! Developers, developers, developers! Yeah. GIVE IT UP FOR ME! Dig it. WHO TOLD YOU TO SIT DOWN??? *hopping, screeching, headbutting and making satan-finger-sighns*

Dear Stockbrokers, M$ CEOs and Marketeers, what ever you smoked, don't ever offer me anything of it.
"PDF-Killer"...I just don't believe all this. Is this just me or the world or /., or whatever?

Re:Sorry boys

[Stary]

It locks the text down to one paper layout format, destroying all of the advantages computers can bring to perusing text. Microsoft Word(tm) you can at least repaginate.

Portable Document Format. As in documents you can edit. You don't happen to have missed the fact that you can actually load and edit PDF files just like DOC files if you have an application which can handle it?

On my linux box, DOCs are just as limited for me as PDFs are for you.

Not really new "News"

[ICantType]

For all you guys trying to read the article and cannot, here some more infos: The actual announcement is about a month old. Here's one story on internetnews (ty to /. this) covering this; and a follow-up. An alternative story can be found at Betanews.

BTW, creating XML-documents out of M$-Word-documents is not a new idea. Check out icoya WordXML (click solutions, than icoya WordXML). It is a high performance extension for Microsoft Word in order to convert content easily into the open, format-neutral and manufacturer-independent XML format.

Re:Sorry boys

[Twylite]

And this is precisely what I look for when I publish a document for public or customer consumption. I want the final image of the document locked down, unmodifiable, the way I intend it to be. No messing with the formatting, fonts, colours or anything else that I carefully put together to convey my message.

To too many people a document is just text. This is far from the truth. A document is a presentation, and says a lot about the person or organisation that prepared it. From technical notes to marketting, control over document format is a vital part of publishing.

And that is why PDF kicks the arse of other formats when it comes to this type of use.

PDF is to XML, as Acrobat is to XDocs

[starvingartist12]

...reports on a new Microsoft PDF-killer technology to be included in Office 11, called XDoc

The PDF-killer isn't XDocs. It isn't even new technology.

XDocs is only Microsoft's front-end application for modifying XML (which the original slashdot post never mentioned). XDoc is positioned as a Word-like way of manipulating XML form data (Screenshot).

If anything, XML will be the PDF-killer. Adobe trapped themselves into a corner when they devoted themselves to a proprietary file format instead of using XML. With everyone jumping on the XML bandwagon, no wonder Adobe's stockholders are getting nervous.

Re:PDF is to XML, as Acrobat is to XDocs

[Baki]

Why the hell would Acrobat be more proprietary than some as of yet unknwon XML DTD (or schema)?

The only fundamental difference is:
binary format (Acrobat) versus ASCII/Unicode (XML) i.e. 'human readable'.

First, proprietary not human readable. Proprietary means an undisclosed file format.

XML without a published DTD or Schema (published both the scheme and how to interpret it) is just as proprietary as any other undisclosed file format. At best, it might be easier to reverse engineer (which is forbidden in the US).

AFAIK, Acrobat is an open format (yes, even binary formats can be open, gasp). Whether XDoc(s) shall be open remains to be seen.

This irritating misuse of proprietary and concept of 'not binary == good' misleads to many mistakes and creates false understanding.

Re:PDF is to XML, as Acrobat is to XDocs

[Fafhrd]

If anything, XML will be the PDF-killer. Adobe trapped themselves into a corner when they devoted themselves to a proprietary file format instead of using XML. With everyone jumping on the XML bandwagon, no wonder Adobe's stockholders are getting nervous.

XML has the potential to be a PDF-killer, indeed. I can imagine some sort or archive where a XSL-FO layout has SVG images embedded, and maybe JPG files attached. It could grow to be very PDF-like.

However, you have to remember that Adobe has been working on PDF since before there was a XML to use. Adobe has recently celebrated ten years working on PDF; XML has only been standardized on 1998, or six years later.

Also, they have jumped on the XML bandwagon, as much as they could. They first did PGML, a sort of PDF-meets-XML. MS counterattacked with VML, and W3C standardized SVG taking ideas from both. And Adobe is now one of the biggest proponents of SVG.

Re:PDF is to XML, as Acrobat is to XDocs

[wfrp01]

If anything, XML will be the PDF-killer.

Amen, I hope so. I always thought that perhaps SVG would fill this role. Why hasn't SVG gained more momentum (along w/ MathML, etc.)? IIRC, I think there were a couple of patent snafu's, along w/ perhaps some text handling deficiencies. But I'm not really qualified to say. Can anyone provide some insight into SVG's ability to play in this space?

a replacement for Microsoft Word forms

[g4dget]

XDocs seems to be mostly about forms. Many businesses already use forms in Microsoft Word format; XDocs, being XML based, has to be better than that dreadful format.

Adobe tried to make PDF widely used for that purpose but failed. And that's quite fortunate: PDF's page oriented format isn't all that hot for on-line forms either.

PDF = open format, won't go away

[forged]

Simpler even, Acrobat is a commercial product but the format, PDF, is an open format. It will never go away because of that and because of the wide range of implementations/tools readilly available.

Why adobe purchased accelio

[Bazzargh]

XDoc s as others have pointed out is a forms technology, not a competitor with PDF in all areas. However, Adobe purchased Accelio earlier in the year, who make a forms authoring and serving product (formerly known variously as FormFlow, ReachForms, RichForms); Adobe just relaunched the product line a week ago, realigning the company somewhat around server products.

Hence the impact of this announcement. If you've actually used the Accelio stuff (and I have, a lot) you'll know that it could be massively improved upon; other products are biting at their heels already.

So MS weighs in immediately after Adobe's fanfare and says they're going to enter the market (note that XDocs does not even have a release date yet!) - its hardly surprising that Adobe's stock takes a hit.

Re:Sorry boys

[The-Bus]

On your Linux box, you can download StarOffice from Sun (which I believe is still free as in beer, or at least it used to be).

You cannot, however, get Adobe Acrobat 5.x for free from Adobe's website (to be able to edit files). Nor is there another free utility (that I know about at least) that lets you edit existing PDF files.

Furthermore, Adobe Acrobat Reader does not kill its process when you exit. It happily hangs around eating up your memory, which makes it a pain in the ass to use on older computers without 74 gigafloppy interweb RAMs of memory (that's technical talk for "a lot of memory" by the way).

I think that if Apple or a third party came up with a non-Adobe solution for a PDF-like document, that could easily kill Microsoft's idea. Or, you can create confusion by offering so many choices that the user just says "F- that! I'll just stick with what I have."

Also, the original's story comparison of this to IE vs. Netscape is a bit faulty. There's no real reason for Joe McRegularUser to have both Internet Explorer and Netscape. Both will allow him to check NBA scores and hot asian teen pix. However, unless this Microsoft application can now handle PDF files as well (my winword.exe only spits out gibberish), AAR will always be necessary. It's kind of akin to me really really hating RealNetworks, but still having bloated GUIware like RealPlayer installed because there's no other real option (pun intended). Just because I have the new XCrap.net document editor, doesn't mean that I don't need Adobe Acrobat Reader.

My solution to this whole big mess? Do what warez kiddies do. Just releases everything in .NFO files that are plain text with lots of ASCII art. I'd like nothing more than to get a press release from Adobe saying something like this:

Due to new competition from Microsoft, we will now be embracing the new NFO standard. This allows you to share documents truly between any system, with documents 10% the size of PDF files. Also, you can have graphics such as a cool-ass dragon breathing fire around your letterhead right over a banner that says: "M Y C O M P U T O R C O M P A N Y R O X O R S!"

Of course Microsoft would write back and say that now Edit.com will be integrated into Office, Windows Media Player, and Microsoft Soccer.

Xdocs will feature...

[jmv]

Many enhancements over PDF, including:
- Windows-only support
- Enforces "Digital Restrictions Management"
- Break the format at every new Office version
- EULA that gives MS copyright for all your documents ...but unfortunately with MS marketing it might even catch on :(

Re:Sorry boys

[ProfessorPuke]

Its not just the format I hate, but that whole category of use. "Good for what it does, but what it does isn't good"

A document is a presentation

That is the bad viewpoint that I wish PDF didn't promulgate. I know, I know, Adobe is just responding to demands of the market...
so I really have to focus my ire against the unwashed masses who think they're graphics designers and that they actually need fancy layouts. Or at the even greater masses who allow themselves to be swayed by such trivalities.

The kind of publishing that needs formatting, fonts, and color is mainly about deception. With rare exceptions, text is the truth, and the window-dressing tries to hide it. From Madison Avenue advertising shills to corporate Annual Report polishers to the legions of "PowerPoint(tm)
Engineers" infesting government contracting, its all about getting your words to be judged by something other than what they say.

Many authors aren't concious about doing this- they just want to fit in with everyone else- but that doesn't make it any more honest.

(Yes, there are people who prepare truely graphical data, and who need to lay it out precisely. They are in the minority)

(Yes, for content not delivered over computer- flattened wood pulp or something- carefully prepared alignment is an aid to comprehensibility. But there's no reason to carry this forward into the digital era).

In a more ideal future, all presentation issues will be decided on the client side. You send me the data, and I've configured my software to present it the way I prefer. It won't happen for a while yet, but I can dream. And the continued use of PDF blocks this dream.

XDocs is not a pdf competitor!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

XDocs has almost nothing to do with pdf. Please read the article or the description of xdocs on MS site.

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:
---
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 .Net server products, Microsoft can address both sides of the forms equation.

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 .Net server components, as it most likely will be, Microsoft will have a significant selling point.

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."
---

Re:Stock took a hit?

[Scarblac]

That says as much about the sad state of the way the stock market works as it does about MS.

After the result of the lawsuit came out, MS stock went up, of course. And then, so did the stock of a lot of other tech companies. After all, as my newspaper explains, when the biggest company of them all goes up so much, that means the whole sector must be on a rise!

So, in short, stock market logic:
1. Microsoft abuses their competitors, abusing a monopolistic stranglehold on many other businesses
2. But they avoid bad punishment in the resulting lawsuit, and can basically continue their practices
3. That's good for Microsoft!
4. That must be good for the competition!!
("5. Profit!" occurs only in their dreams).

Take the Microsoft Pledge!

[Telecommando]

All together now...

I Pledge Allegiance
To the Flag
That Appears on my Desktop Startup Screen.
And to the Monopoly
For Which it Stands;
One Operating System
Over All,
Inescapable,
With Freedom and Privacy for none.

(Sorry, couldn't resist. Feel free to mod me down.)

Re:Take the Microsoft Pledge!

[mz001b]

I Pledge Allegiance
To the Flag
That Appears on my Desktop Startup Screen.
And to the Monopoly
For Which it Stands;
One Operating System
Over All,
Inescapable,
With Freedom and Privacy for none.

I would like to amend this by adding "under Bill" to the "One Operating System" line.

Judge CKK verdict leaked before market close

[DrSkwid]

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

End user readability

[Servo]

The only way this would even begin to work is if MS's implementation is readable by every OS. The generation of the PDF is one thing, but its sucess is because it is easily accessed on every platform. Not only that, but since its become a household standard, free alternatives exist to generate the actual documents.

MS isn't competing with Adobe, they are competing with a standard.

You clearly haven't done print.

[abulafia]

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

XDocs is just a modern clone of Lotus Notes

[thing12]

It's a just an editor and toolkit to put forms on your company intranet (and probably later the Internet) to gather data. That's all it is - not a PDF killer - not even a PDF competitor. From Microsoft's XDocs web site:

"XDocs," a code name for the newest member of the Microsoft Office family, streamlines the process of gathering information by enabling teams and organizations to easily create and work with rich, dynamic forms. The information collected can be integrated with a broad range of business processes because XDocs supports any customer-defined XML schema and integrates with XML Web services. As a result, XDocs helps to connect information workers directly to organizational information and gives them the ability to act on it, which leads to greater business impact.

Does that sound like a pdf killer to you? Does it even sound like they're after the same market? Sure they're using XML and they're making "documents" - still sounds more like Lotus Notes than Acrobat. But who uses Acrobat/PDF to collect data? Yes, there are forms in PDF, but the implementation is not nearly flexible enough to build a data collection application, nor can you build decent data collection apps around MS Word.

XDocs is designed to work with any customer-defined XML schema. Where's the proprietary nature there? You give it your proprietary schema and then you use it to build forms to collect data into that schema. All Microsoft is doing is implementing a framework to easilly collect and present information. This is exactly what Lotus Notes was doing more than 5 years ago, only with XDocs the collected data is stored using your XML DTD instead of Lotus's proprietary NSF format. I'm sure Microsoft will extend it to the web - just using an XSL transform to change the XDoc into HTML and collect your data that way.

None of this prevents you from using a PDF to archive resulting documents. To be sure, you can probably embed an XDoc form into an XML dataset and view the resulting file with an XDoc viewer - but that's still one more app that everyone needs, and PDF is still the best portable format for archiving all sorts of documents and images. XDoc just collects information. Yes... all very insidious of Microsoft. A PDF killer.. I don't think so. I don't even see it as a PDF competitor.

Re:Stock took a hit?

[uchian]

That comment (and it's moderation) shows that the stock market is in an even sadder state of affairs - nobody buys stock because they believe in the company that they are buying stocks in. They just buy stock because they think they are going to make money out of somebody elses hard work.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Not needed

[Ed Avis]

What's the point? Everyone knows that Word documents are the only interchangeable document format you'll ever need.

Re:Stock took a hit?

[techstar25]

Obviously those stockholders have never heard of Photoshop or Illustrator, software so dominating that MS had to quietly pull their own competing Photodraw off the shelf, just to save face. I'll be glad to pick up those bargain shares.

Re:Stock took a hit?

[jez9999]

But that was what the stock market was always for... getting rich. People never bought shares in a company because they liked the company. Maybe because they thought it would perform well, yes, but the only only people who own shares in a company because they like it are possibly the company's owners/workers.

MS is to Netscape as Apple is to Adobe

[elliotj]

So comparisons are being made between Adobe and Netscape. Let's compare apples to apples then.

Netscape was a program for working with HTML files. MSIE did the same thing for free. MSIE was NOT trying to introduce a new document standard, it was intended to render the same web pages that Netscape could render (yes, yes, I know they did mean and evil things that made being a webmaster shitty because of having to code for both platforms, but for the most part this is correct.)

Acrobat is a program for working with PDF files. OS X does the same thing for free. You an render a PDF from any application and view it using the "Preview" program.

In the sense of giving away what someone else is selling, Apple is to Adobe as MS was to Netscape. Netscape failed because they couldn't get revenue selling what the other guy was offering for free. But Apple isn't really a threat to Adobe because the Mac is such a small share of the market. Adobe must make the lion's share of their Acrobat Distiller revenues from Windows users.

MS won't be the threat to Adobe that they were to Netscape if their new product doesn't use the PDF format. This is more apples and oranges because PDF is already a very strong standard that will be hard to displace, and MS isn't just offering PDF manipulation software for free.

Now or never...

[SerpentMage]

And this is the sad state of the industry. Governments would rather not "mess" with the giant for fear of tech market problems. Is this not the time to do things? Since more control will mean more problems?

The result is that it is up to the people to take back control. Solution, spend as a little as possible to support MS. Remember MS is a company controlled by profits. Hurt them where it hurts them the most.

Use Linux... If not, then use Windows XP, but use Open Office or other compatible tools. Remember the goal here is not to entirely stop, but stop the gravy train. MS needs growth and if we take back control and stop that growth to status quo MS will have problems. They will have to raise prices and start gouging the consumer like they do with their enterprise licensing. And with time people will come to their own senses.

The key here is not to be complacent!

It's only competing against .doc

[SpinyNorman]

How on earth can this compete with .pdf if it's not a cross-platform standard?!! The WHOLE point to .pdf is that it's universally available. This is just another Windows-only format.

Kinda lame

[h0mi]

That's kind of lame that a vague announcement of a new Microsoft product (Xdocs) which is only going to work in the new version of office (11) which will only work on Win2K or XP or the next version of Windows suddenly means that PDFs are going to whither away and die.

Nevermind the widespread usage of pdf files today. Where I work, we use PDF files to store contracts, and we'd just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in a huge project to automate the conversion of post script files into PDFs that are now accessable over the web. I can guarantee that there's no way we'd switch from PDF to Xdocs... at least not for another 5 years.

The analysts who made their remarks about Adobe should realize that MS tried this before (sort of) when they started distributing .doc readers for free in an attempt to turn ubiquitous .docs into .pdf killers. Anyone remember those doc (and .xls too) readers?

People should use postscript anyway

[wfrp01]

Instead of bickering about which of these two formats to use, stop and consider that you can write postscript without using any proprietary software. And you can view postscript on pretty much any platform you desire using ghostview.

So throw them *both* out, I say.

Re:Sorry boys

[uradu]

> it's been seen as a companion to postscript

Exactly, in fact PDF and Postscript are very similar. When you render text to PS, you can end up with low-level drawing primitives such as lines and curves defining each letter, rather than high-level instructions such as "draw this string at position x,y". Once you've done that, recovering the original text amounts to highly sophisticated shape recognition and is impossible for all practical purposes. Precisely because PS and PDF support so many rendering mechanisms they are unsuitable as editable document formats.

Re:Nah - Is there PDF licensing?

[TrebleJunkie]

Is there a PDF license fee? I don't think so -- It's supposed to be an open format.

And, after diggout out the 500-page PDF1.3 spec (some interesting reading -- PDF is a cool format.), (Pages 15 and 16, too, by the way.) yes, indeed, you can pretty much implement it in anything you want to read or write PDF's, as long as you include an appropriate Adobe-indicating copyright notice.

So, MS could implement PDF if it really wanted to.

Although, now, in the crazy days of XML, and as PDF is sort of, well, old, maybe xDocs is something better.

Mind you, if it's not free and open, nobody will use it.

XDocs isn't PostScript

[adrew]

And therefore won't be accepted by the printing industry. PDF IS PostScript (just ripped to the screen) and outputs properly to most imagesetters.

Anybody who knows anything will tell you that printers hate to receive anything built in a Microsoft program.

SVG

[srussell]

What might "kill" PDF is the sneaker-technology, SVG. As anyone who's done a lot of SVG knows, SVG is missing support for only one feature that would enable it to replace HTML and PDF -- support for text flow control. The 2.0 version of the SVG spec (4.2/2/2) will include rules for this support.

Since Adobe itself is heavily into SVG, it (SVG) is positioned to become the leading display document format. This is, in some ways, ironic, because most people think of SVG as an image format.

Consider:

1. Autotrace will generate PS (PDF's older brother) and SVG (among other things)
2. FOP will generate document output as PS, PDF, and SVG (among other things).
3. Most vector graphics programs for Linux have some SVG support, and Sodipodi uses SVG as its native document format. Open/StarOffice will generate SVG as well.

Wow!

[Pig Hogger]

Wow! Another virus vector!!! Who said innovative technology is dull???

XDocs has nothing to do with PDF - I've seen it

[tbray]

I saw XDocs for the first time 3 months ago in Alpha. It's a generalized form-filling and routing app with a pretty pure XML back end. It's not obvious to me why it should replace either ordinary Web apps or VB apps, but then I'm not a MSFT product manager.

PDF?!?!? get real. PDF stands for "Print the Damn File", it's reasonably-portable electronic paper. Adobe in their dreams would like to turn it into a forms package but they've never got close to first base.

A bit of basic fact-checking in future, /. is suposed to be technically competent.

US Legal System, MS a little late

[bobaferret]

I think this is just a bit of an over reaction. MS is a little late in this area. PDF is very well established as a standard. Adobe and the rest of the world are much more cognizant of how MS handles competition. They will b much more prepared then netscape was. Finally, they also have the US legal system to deal with. PDF is the legal standard for e-filing of cases and motions. The entire US legal system from parking tickets to antitrust filings, if filied electronicaly is filied using PDF,TIFF and a touch of XML. I develop products in this area, and it is hard enough to get these folks online, much less change their minds to use yet another standard. Last week I had a discussion with various courts about how to get just this kind of stuff onto microfilm. The courts won't move, and the businesses will stay close to what the courts use for official documents. I really don't think PDF is going anywhere. Through in XML-FO and FOP and things get even more firm.

-jj-

XDocs' Potential

[LowellPorter]

XDocs' potential is not as a PDF killer, but that's the way it could go. The reason MS is using XML is to make it easier for users to exchange data. One user could create an Access database with it and then send it to a user that doesn't have Access. This user could open it up in Excel or Word without doing anything. Right now the sender or receiver would have to do some type of conversion in order to use the data.

One poster correctly observed that to many users _WORD_ is the computer. XDocs makes users more depenent on Microsoft. Now it'll be easier to share spreadsheets, databases, and other documents... they can do it with one program not several.

Re:IE and Office are already squabbling

[ianscot]

As Office evolves it will be more and more integrated into IE

I'm a Web developer, and the vacillating ways IE has handled links to Office documents have caused our department no end of headaches over the last three versions of IE we've used on our corporate WAN. We're wedded to framesets for some purposes, and IE and Office can't seem to work together.

They open Office docs inside framesets, with the app in the background, like Acrobat -- and printing is screwed up and users can't save the documents. They open a separate IE window with each Office document, including menu options that are sort of half-enabled, not allowing users to use obvious features. They give up on the IE-for-Office-docs idea altogether, opening separate Office app windows for each document, and it works... but it kind of makes one wonder whether they could have figured out that frameset thing to start with, rather than slowly lurching toward the workaround we'd already resorted to for their first hacked implementation.

Print to file from Excel 2000 sometime, and see if you get a Windows API save dialog. See if it looks like the same thing in Word, for example. Um, no.

More integrated over time? Seems to me like the MS departments for Word and Excel are warring factions, leave alone IE.

Re:And just out of curiosity

[RevDobbs]

Does anyone else think there could be an argument made that calling MS Office "productive software" might be stretching things a bit?

What do you mean? Why, just the other day it took me only three hours to pick just the right font (I went with Comic Sans) for the PowerPoint presentation I may be giving (time permitting) to my peers in middle management during our half day "Effective Use of Bullet Points, Bold, and Underlining" seminar.

I can't wait for next week's "Attaching Word Docs with Large Embedded Images to an Email" class!!!

You're an idiot, and so are the moderators.

[Wakko Warner]

PDF isn't a very good format either because Adobe controls the spec. It isn't open.

Yes, this is why it isn't documented anywhere. You certainly can't create your own free PDF creation utility or anything.

Plz look around b4 u make assumptions.

- A.P.

Just one thing

[bogie]

"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"

Since when does Office output PDF files by default? Office only will output PDF files if you spend several hundred dollars on Acrobat. When you print to PDF, you either click a little icon or click File->print PDF. There is absolutely no way MS could stop or influence that. Unless when people try to print PDF files MS hijacks the Adobe buttons and makes them print Xdocs instead. That would have them in a losing court battle with Abode instantly as what MS would have done is break Acrobat on purpose. Adobe actually has the money to defend itself.

The other thing is for this to take off everyone needs to be running Office 11 which isn't going to happen for quite some time. There are a ton of Office 97/2000/XP installs out there. So really just like Acrobat most people would have to download some sort of addon program to read Xdocs correctly since they won't have Office11. Also most people won't even have the ability to make Xdocs.

So although I wouldn't bet against MS, I'm not so sure PDF is going to be dying anytime soon.

X [You can type more than that for your subject]

[Citizen of Earth]

Linux Format reports on a new Microsoft PDF-killer technology to be included in Office 11, called XDocs.

Why doesn't Microsoft avoid the confusion of a plethora of names with "X" in them and just start calling all of their products "X". Everyone should. "X reports on a new X X-killer technology to be included in X, called X." Of course, it will never run on X.

Re:Stock took a hit?

[joto]

Well, on the other hand, most so-called tech companies aren't competitors to Microsoft. They make software that relies on Microsoft products to work. (i.e. windows, office, vb, ie, etc...) So what's bad for Microsoft is bad for them as well. Not everyone can be making OSes and Office-suites...

That being said, the stock market is designed to be unstable and fluctuate. Why it doesn't fluctuate even more is beyond my understanding, but there must be some factors that stabilize it as well (they are called long-term investors, I guess).

Re:Stock took a hit?

[jasonditz]

I would guess the hit ADBE took today is more related to the downgrade from Deutsche Securities than anything MSFT did.

MSWord?

[Grendel Drago]

Mind you, if it's not free and open, nobody will use it.

Yeah, 'cause no one ever uses things like the increasingly obfuscated MSWord formats. 'Cause they're not free and open. I can't remember the last time some idiot sent me a proprietary Word-format document. Nope. Never happens.

--grendel drago

Re:Sad but True

[Anonvmous Coward]

"I love MS's business model:

1. establish monopoly.
2. Target competitor.
3. Devise MS version of competitor's product - similar but incompatible.
4. Integrate into Windows and distribute for free.
5. Prevent computer manufacturers from including competitor's product.
6. Watch company die.
7. Get sued.
8. String out suit until you win or until suit is no longer relevant.
9. 2 days later...GOTO 2. "

You forgot:

-????
-Profit!

I'm not just making a stale joke here, you've missed the step where MS actually makes large sums of money.

Re:Pathetic state of things...

[WildBeast]

Funny because I see more Apple ads on TV than MS ads. Actually I rarely see MS ads on TV.

They have a lot of power, so what? The government have a lot of power to and I don't see anyone complaining. Sony have a lot of power to.

I'm sure MS stock goes down when they announce that Linux was deployed in such or such huge organisation instead of Windows.

There's a sucker born every minute

[alizard]

While Adobe is NOT our friend, Adobe stock pricing dropping in response to the announcement by Microsoft a vaporware format that will apparently work only with Office 11 and which has zero installed base either among users or creators suggests that investors haven't learned a damned thing from the rise and fall of the Internet bubble.

The important lesson that seems to have been missed is... learn enough about the underlying technology to understand whether or not the business model makes sense or not through one's personal analysis, don't make an investment decision based on what the "pundits" say.

So the entire printing industry is going to change over from supporting PDF as an input format that supports everything up to and including embedded job ticket and billing information because Microsoft said "Boo!"

All of us are immediately going to go out and deinstall Acrobat Reader or whatever we're using to read PDFs and buy Office 11 (changing to XP to do it) because all the terabytes of PDF only content are going to magically morph into XDocs.

Yeah, right.

Even if the format is in fact superior, PDF is so much a part of Internet and print and other technologies that it would be years before XDoc content became noticeable enough to make it worth the trouble for end users to download and install a reader.

A company who makes its docs available in XDoc format only means that only Office 11 users will be able to read it. All that company will get as a result will be trouble from angry users. People aren't going to upgrade to Office 11 just to read some company's docs.

However, it does present an investment opportunity for making money off the stupid who are unloading Adobe because they actually believe this bullshit, just like the pre-announcement of the MS antitrust decision did... people snapped up $93 million in MS stock in response to that pre-announcement, including the slashdot readers who got to the pre-announcement from here.

I was wondering who the "pundits" cited in this article were. That's a word that only marketdroids and a few hack journalists that know no better use. The original of this article which was posted without attribution at Linux format can be found here.

Well, the "pundits" exist, a search on XDocs at google reveals this.

Here's a somewhat better article hereWell, the same investor analysts whose stock hyping and premature panic that drove the rise and fall of the bubble are in hype mode now. Apparently, since their understanding isn't past the buzzword level, they just don't get how embedded PDF technology is in American business and particuarly industrial segments like printing.

With the right apps, I can send a PDF file to a printer that can be turned into a gigantic print run without human intervention. If XDocs is all that Microsoft hopes for and enjoys the results that Microsoft wants and comes out on time, I might be able to do the same with XDocs by 2010 or so.

Remember this next time you're tempted to make an investment decision based on what a "pundit" says. Then check the facts yourself, you might make a lot more money by doing the opposite.

Re:Nah - Is there PDF licensing?

[notestein]

Below are some instructions I put together some time back for configuring an open source PDF writer for use in Windows XP. This acts like PDF Writer from Adobe. It shows up as a printer driver.

I'm sure you've come across PDF files on the web. Perhaps you've even thought you'd like to publish some of your documents as PDFs. Then you found out it was a couple hundred to a few thousand dollars.

There is another way. Open Source.

By installing some GNU software (Ghostscript), a printer re-director (RedMon), and a few configurations, you'll be cranking out PDFs from your favorite program just by printing!

I performed this install on Windows XP, so your experience may vary.

1. Install AFPL Ghostscript. In my case, gs704w32.exe.

2. Install RedMon. In my case, redmon17.zip.

3. Go to your Add a New Printer wizard for Windows. a) Make it a local printer and don't automatically detect b) Choose create a new port and select Redirected Port from the dropdown menu. c) Unless you have good reason to do otherwise, just accept the default port name, which should be RPT1 d) Select a printer that has all the features you've always dreamed of your printer having! I chose Apple Color LaserWriter 12/1600 e) Fill out the next few dialog boxes as you see fit. Don't bother to print a test page. f) Now look at your printer's properties, select your new port, and choose to configure it.

4. Adjust your port. At this point, you should have a dialog box for port configuration displayed. Depending on where you installed Ghostscript, your values may vary below. Also, make sure you use the 16bit name for the path. Notice my "Program Files" has been represented as "PROGRA~1". Under Windows XP, you can get these names by using "dir /X" from a command line.

Field Label: Redirect this port to the program:

Value: C:PROGRA~1gsgs7.04bingswin32c.exe

Field Label: Arguments for this program are:

Value: @C:PROGRA~1gspdfwrite.rsp -sOutputFile="%1" -c save pop -f -

Dropdown Label: Output

Value: Prompt for filename

5. If you didn't notice, the Field Value for Arguments for this program contains a reference to a file pdfwrite.rsp. This is a plain text file and should contain something similar to the following. (Adjust at your own adventure and risk!)

-IC:PROGRA~1gsgs7.04lib;C:PROGRA~1gsfonts

-sDEVICE=pdfwrite

-r300

-dNOPAUSE

-dSAFER

-sPAPERSIZE=letter

Fire up your word processor or spreadsheet program and give it a try!

XDocs and PDF are not doing the same thing

[rochlin]

Is XDocs a resolution independent format that is entirely portable (supporting embeddable fonts) that can handle complex layout like postscript?

Not from anything I've read.

Does PDF support an embeddable data hieracrchy like an XML document for machine parsing of its content? Not in any deep way.

XDocs appears to be a technology/application specifically oriented towards Forms -- that is, data entry stuff. PDF is a technology for creating portable printable documents. They are fundamentally different. Could PDF add on a nice XML layer that would give the data a document contains a more meaningful, parseable structure? Yes, but they haven't done so. Could MSFT add a more portable, resolution independent, presentation layer to their data structures? Yup. But not yet. In the meantime, they just aren't directly competing.

Re:Stock took a hit?

[ces]

Oddly enough the $99 JASC PaintShop Pro is about the closest thing on the market to a Photoshop killer. Even so there are situations where I prefer photoshop.