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Microsoft to Introduce PDF competitor 'Metro'
RustNeverSleeps writes "Computerworld reports that Microsoft will be including a new document format called 'Metro' with Longhorn. Apparently, Metro is intended to be a competitor to Adobe's PDF and Postscript formats. The format will be open and available for royalty-free licensing, and will be based on XML. Can we expect Microsoft to do this right? If they do, I think it could be a good thing." Reader gsfprez is less optimistic: "... I noticed the main, and probably most important difference between old and busted PDF and new-hotness Metro (besides the Queer Eye styled name)... 'We will offer products based on this next generation RIP technology and make them available under license to printer manufacturers and software integrators worldwide.' Yes, I can see it now - entire industries undoing their time-tested, battle hardend PDF-based workflows with free and open files all for the chance to use patented, pay-for-use Microsoft proprietary workflows, software, and files. Good luck with that, guys."
If royalty free licenses were enough to get open source reimplementations out of legal murkiness, then no one would be complaining about Mono. I'll suspend judgement on this one until we see what the terms of the license are and what patents Microsoft holds on it.
http://www.acropdf.com/
Look for PDF Speed Up. Removes the nags, sets all the plugins to optional, turns off the splash screen, kills the ads in the corner, ect.
Acrobat Reader 6.x opens very quick now, and I have yet to have it crash. (By quick I mean in under 3 seconds on my 900mhz, 512mb pc100 sdram win2k machine)
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
But consider...is this notan important step to wiping out *.doc as the "standard" document format? Granted, you're replacing it with Yet Another Microsoft File Format, but surely this one sounds like it will be far less onerous to work with.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
I think Microsoft feels it's important to do this because PDF is becoming a truly universal format, and they want to jump onto the bandwagon without giving Adobe any credit in any way for it.
Now, PDF is a first-class file format in OS-X, and OpenOffice can create them fairly easily. Building PDF capability into Word must strike Microsoft as being just a little too interoperable.
The format will be open and available for royalty-free licensing, and will be based on XML.
Um, the words "open" and "licensing" are not compatible. Not in my book leastways.
Can we expect Microsoft to do this right? If they do, I think it could be a good thing.
How come? What is there that Metro can do that PDF, or for that matter Word combined with Wordviewer, can't? I guess it would be nice to have OS support for a portable document format, but does Microsoft really have to invent an entirely new format to do that?
but your forgetting,
if microsoft makes a metro document editor included in ms word, which almost all businesses have, then most businesses will have no need to ever use adobe again. All they need is for metro to be almost as good and then creatively get it on every computer out there. Then everyone will be able to read and edit the document. After Adobe is dead, they can start to charge for a "full featured" document editor and leave simple edits and reading to word(or as a stand alone program). Either way, they can use this to kill adobe pretty damn easily.
It helps when your stuff comes pre-installed. YOu just need to bundle it right to kill off competition.
of course, this is all banking on their ability to come out with a format that is at least almost as good at pdf. But if they do, it will still take a few years to begin unseating Adobe because businesses are slow to change even with incentives.
It's not at all obvious, but you can have a URL link to a specific page of a PDF in Acrobat Reader. Tack something like #page=42 onto the end of a URL to a PDF and Reader will open it to that page. (Of course, for what you describe you'll still have to update the URL when you finish, but it's better than nothing.)
More info here.
> Firstly, Microsoft was dealing with a universal format - HTML. Sure, they may have buggered it up or extended it, but BOTH Netscape and Microsoft needed to deal with that format. In this case, Microsoft is trying to introduce a new format that noone has adopted yet. I don't think it's going to fly - people have too much invested in Adobe's PDF and PS formats.
When Metroviewer is shipped with Longhorn and XPSP3, pdf producers will see that they can switch to Metro and the majority if their audience will need no extra software whatsoever. Couple this with the 80/20 rule (about 80 percent of pdf creators use 20 percent of the feature set) then a free beer Metro export bundled with MS Office will seem very attractive to them.
PDF will still occupy the high end. Most $1,000+ printers understand postscript and PDF natively, and even if these presses/printers are firmware upgradable, who wants another page description language? Especially if most of your graphics/pre-press people use Macs anyway and can't use Metro. Sorry, just because it's XML and doesn't have %% signs everywhere doesn't make it a worthwhile page description language.
Microsoft tried to butt in on Adobe's turf before with Truetype, but no one (or at least, no one important) does Truetype font libraries, Bitstream, Monotye et al all make their fonts type 1 postscript.