Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft takes on PDF
bhhenry writes "Linux Format reports on a new Microsoft PDF-killer technology to be included in Office 11, called XDocs. From the article: "Adobe's stock took an immediate hit, and some analysts went so far as to compare Adobe to erstwhile MS competitor Netscape.""
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.
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...
XDocs is an XML editor. It really has very little to do with output formats like PDF. The only company likely to be sweating about this product is Altova.
bp
MS Xdocs
MS eXchange
MS Xbox
MS Windows XP
What next?
MS Xwindow?
MS Xnotfree86?
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
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.
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.
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.
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
Let me guess, IE7 will include built in support for them.
It was mentioned at MozillaZine for a month ago or so that IE7 won't be released (although I have my doubts) and Microsoft will go 100% MSN Explorer in future releases of Windows.
But I'm sure what you meant was "Let me guess, The Next Browser will include built-in support for them" and I guess that's likely.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
>blockquote>I have to go and install some v.slow and large application to load them.
How is this any different from Word Documents?
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
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.
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.
Be kind. There are too many mean people out there already.
| * 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.
[..]
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:rather than (and this is a small extract from a very simple document in Word 2000 saved as "html"):
I can't read the slashdotted article right now, but if by "immediate hit" they mean that the stock jumped almost 12% in one day, they're right. Of course, maybe that's just related to their confirmation of projected 4th quarter earnings.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Also there have been very FEW viruses that infect PDF's, imagine the viruses that will be written for M$'s version.
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.
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.
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
Of course Microsoft would write back and say that now Edit.com will be integrated into Office, Windows Media Player, and Microsoft Soccer.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
XDocs has almost nothing to do with pdf. Please read the article or the description of xdocs on MS site.
.Net server products, Microsoft can address both sides of the forms equation.
.Net server components, as it most likely will be, Microsoft will have a significant selling point.
It is basically a way to create a front-end for XML docs or XML web services. This way, a user can say, well this field is a drop-down and this one is a date field and this is how I want to arrange it on a screen. While they are doing this, they are linking the fields to nodes in the XML doc.
Think of it as a MS Access gui front-end tool over an XML source. It's focus is data entry not presentation, exactly the opposite of PDF.
If you think xdocs and acrobat are equivalent, then the same could be said about any word processor or html editor or desktop publishing tool, etc.
Article:
---
XDocs vs. Adobe:
POSTEDON 2002-10-31 13:07:47 by Linux Format Admin
Microsoft hyperdaz writes "Two weeks ago Microsoft announced XDocs, a new application that will be part of the upcoming Office 11 suite.
XDocs, according to Microsoft, will make it easier to create richly formatted online forms, and to simplify the collection of form data. Because it uses XML, XDocs form data should integrate with a variety of data repositories with relative ease.
The first reaction from tech pundits was to proclaim that a mortal blow had been struck against Adobe, the PDF file format, and Adobe's Acrobat family of PDF manipulation products. Adobe's stock took an immediate hit, and some analysts went so far as to compare Adobe to erstwhile MS competitor Netscape.
It's a bit premature to be ringing alarm bells for Adobe, though. XDocs will be a strong challenge to certain facets of Acrobat, but there are significant differences between the two products, and where they are similar, Adobe is in a position to put up a good fight.
XDocs's obvious challenge to Acrobat is in the online forms market.
In that narrow field, it's clear why XDocs is perceived as a threat: Forms, by their nature, require a client and a server. Between their virtual lock on the office productivity suite market and the popularity of SQL Server, Exchange, and the rest of the
While PDF forms can be integrated with backend sources like SAP and PeopleSoft, XDocs forms will be able to do this as well, according to Microsoft, and if XDocs is deeply integrated into Exchange and other
While Acrobat Reader may be everywhere, it's safe to say that it probably isn't used as often as Office, and Microsoft could gain an advantage in the forms market simply by producing a well designed, easy-to-use product with a user interface that's familiar and inviting to people who already use the other Office products regularly. Adobe's defense against this has been to make it possible to create PDFs from any application, including Office. How these differences will work out competitively remains to be seen, and depend on how well XDocs is executed, and how well both Adobe and Microsoft educate potential customers.
But it's important to remember that most people don't use PDFs for online forms--in fact, many people aren't aware that they even can be used for that purpose. The most common use of PDF is to securely distribute documents that can be viewed and printed consistently across different platforms. XDocs, judging from Microsoft's announcements to date, doesn't address these features, and for the foreseeable future Adobe has this market to itself. What this means is that XDocs is unlikely to take market share away from PDF--what Microsoft appears to be trying to do is limit the growth of PDF, because PDF's true strengths in secure document distribution and printing remain unchallenged.
Well before the XDocs announcements, though, Adobe was expanding the forms functionality of PDF.
"PDF is evolving beyond a document format, and is now a rich information container," according to Julie McEntee, Director of Product Management for Adobe. As part of that effort Adobe recently announced a new, more forms-friendly version of Acrobat Reader, and beefed up its line of PDF server products. And PDF has supported XML for a number of years."
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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).
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
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.)
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
The CKK judgement was suppoosed to be released after the close of markets to stave off a run of share transfers before the weekend.
According to él Register the report was emailed out 2 hours before time, which meant trading could happen for those fortunate enough to get such a mail before everyone else. Slashdot even reported it _before_ time.
http://theregister.co.uk/content/4/27910.html
Also interesting is the analysis
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I'm no fan of Adobe. They abuse a dominant position, too (take Photoshop's most recent changes with "improving" tiffs).
However, saying all HTML needs to match PDF is page breaks is like saying all a Pinto needs to take on a Porsche is not to explode.
PDFs are entirely editable in many applications. They can include font data. They include everything needed to output cleanly on a variety of output devices. They are made to look the same on screen as they will on output devices. They solve many of the main problems with delivering files to press.
HTML is markup. PDF is page description. There is an enormous difference.
-j
I forget what 8 was for.
"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.
What's the point? Everyone knows that Word documents are the only interchangeable document format you'll ever need.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
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.
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.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
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?
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!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
It's in the developer builds.
Under UNIX based systems where spadmin, the printer administration program, uses ghostscript, ps2pdf, etc. We're working on a new 'create PDF' feature on all the platforms we support, you can find it in the 'developer' builds today.
The full document is Here
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
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).
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
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:
Wow! Another virus vector!!! Who said innovative technology is dull???
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.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
"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.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch