Office 12 to Include Native PDF Support

parry writes "Microsoft announced today at the MVP summit that Office 12, the next version of Microsoft Office, will have native support for the PDF document format. Support will be built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, OneNote, Visio, and InfoPath." From the article: "Currently, on our OfficeOnline site, we are seeing over 30,000 searches per week for PDF support. That makes a pretty easy decision"

Comments

Re:How "native"? Importing too?

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for a major engineering firm for a few years, and documents were distributed in PDF format specifically because they were read-only.

If you were reading one of our PDFs, you could be assured that the content was accurate. Even printed versions of the document were (supposed to be) considered suspect.

Making PDFs Read/Write would torpedo a LOT of current practices.

Re:How "native"? Importing too?

[AussiePenguin]

But you can already write to them with acrobat professional.

Re:So what does this do to thier "competing" forma

[oncehour]

This most likely IS their competing format. I suspect Microsoft is just bundling their Office Killer with their Acrobat Killer into a nice, neat package. It's more efficient from a business stand point and gives each of the "Killers" more of an effect. Why buy a seperate license for Adobe or create a program to teach workers how to use OpenOffice when Microsoft Office has familiarity AND a bundled PDF creator in one.

I wonder if Microsoft will suffer any sort of anti-competitive lawsuits over this measure, assuming it is successful and isn't Vaporware as a vast majority of their announcements for current projects are. Of course, with the acquisition of Flash, I'm sure Adobe will be able to stick it out and possibly create an even better PDF product. I hope my faith in the Free Market is well founded.

Re:How "native"? Importing too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious? PDF files can be edited with Adobe acrobat. I've done it. If you haven't encrypt the files why can't you edit them?

I'm also sure you can edit the text in a normal text editor.

This is not security!!!!!

Oh, *really*?

[Darkforge]

From the article: "Currently, on our OfficeOnline site, we are seeing over 30,000 searches per week for PDF support. That makes a pretty easy decision"

So, how's about you, me, and a few thousands of our friends search for OpenDocument support?

Re:OpenOffice

[jimicus]

While I'm generally system-agnostic (It'll get me modded to oblivion, but IMO the best system is the one which does what you want it to do), there is one minor historical fact here.

Microsoft are not an innovative company, technology-wise. Innovation, invention, call it what you will, implies either creating something totally new or at the very least putting an original spin on something which already exists.

Where Microsoft do excel is in marketing. They have historically been masters at looking at the market and making their decisions based on where the market is going - generally by buying out or essentially copying the competition. cf. Excel vs. Lotus 1-2-3, Netscape vs. IE (granted, Netscape 4 was more than a little bloated and crufty, but I don't think the outcome would have been much different if it was sleek and efficient).

Don't get me wrong, they do have a few good products in their portfolio (I don't care whether or not YOU find shared calendars in Exchange useful, the business world does). But practically nothing that's particularly innovative.

There is a pint of beer sitting on my desk waiting for the first person who can name a reasonably successful product or technology - past or present - which Microsoft pioneered.

microsoft bashing

[mrterrysilver]

everyone on slashdot bashes microsoft non-stop and its very annoying.

take for example pdf support. it became a feature that maybe they didn't do first but realized there is a need for it and they added it. are they supposed to never add features they didn't originally think of? isn't the most important thing that they reconize it is something customers want and they give it to them?

also i'm sick and tired of hearing that there's no innovation from microsoft. i've used office 12 and it is very cool and has lots of very useful innovative features. the menu tabs make finding what you need much easier than digging through drop downs. theres also an instant preview when you mouse over different fonts, and it displays it right in the document. same thing if you're adding tables, an instant preview of the table appears as you are creating one. these are just a few quick examples i thought were great.

will they get credit for these types of innovations? not on slashdot.

So Does Massachusetts

[Been on TV]

Coincidence that this announcement comes a few days after Massachusetts goes for PDF as one of the approved formats to use in government? Methinks not...

PDF --- A Relic of the Age of Paper

[Lucas Membrane]

PDF is the most miserable format to have to read the way that most of us do most of our reading -- on a computer. I've got lousy (ie over-50) eyes, so I magnify everything with that zoom magnifier so that the text fills the screen horizontally. What happens when I scroll down? Because pdf is for paper, and paper has different right and left margins depending on whether you're on a right or left page, the next page won't have its print filling my screen, it's off to the left or right. Play with the horizontal scroll bar every page. Thanks, pdf. Then, because it thinks the printed page is everything, Ctrl-A doesn't select 'All' text, just all text on the current page. And don't get me started on documents presented newspaper style, where I've gotta keep scrolling up and down, left and right. And page down gives the next page of text (according to the hypothetical paper), not the next screen of text according to the actual viewing device. That's so close to useless, you'd think MS invented it. The objective in software is to achieve device independence. The PDF viewer manages to achieve device dependence on a device that isn't even in use (paper). Paper is going to be an exception. A printable e-book would be nice, but if I want a paper book, I don't need a computer. To make the computer subservient to the dead tree is upside-down design.

Re:PDF --- A Relic of the Age of Paper

[lwells-au]

I'm currently in the process of writing my honours thesis, so I have used hundred and hunreds of lengthy PDFs this year (as most journal access is electronic this day). I completely agree with you that PDFs make for crappy screen reading, but used for certain purposes PDF make a lot of sense. I would make two points:

1) When writing an academic text you invariable reference your sources (otherwise its, obviously, plagarism). PDF is useful because you (usually) get a scan of the original article, with the original formatting. Often when articles are presented in other formats -- html and text -- you loose the formatting, and vitally, the page numbers which makes referencing that much more difficult.

2) Consider the context in which MS is adopting PDF: Office. The main use, I would assume, will be for people who are writing documents -- be they spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations or word documents. PDF will enable Office users to be sure that their document will display properly on other machines. I can't tell you the number of issues there are with ensuring correct display and print out of MS Word documents across multiple machines. I often print articles out on the Uni machines before handing them in, but because of different MS Word versions, software and hardware setup, your perfectly formatted essay (on your home machine) can look bizarre on the Uni computer. Saving it as a PDF means that I can be sure that when I come to print it at Uni, all my formatting stays the way I intended it. The more complex the document -- different margins, footnotes, bullet lists, etc -- the more these issues crop up. If you're just writting a letter it may be irrelevant if the formatting is slightly changed; if you suddenly find your footnotes gobbled its a major issue.

In that respect PDF can be a godsend as far as portablilty goes, and that's not even considering the cross platform issues (i.e. not having access to a machine with MS Office). To some of us, the tree is still vital ;-)

Re:So what does this do to thier "competing" forma

[TheNetAvenger]

Metro? Thy production team be disbanded...

More likely PDF support will be built through Metro, as basically Metro is the XPS system in a Document.

As for the post above... Silly...

PDF will be rendered using Metro technologies is my guess, as they are not coding to the GDI but XPS. XPS is the new Windows/Document/Printer XAML format that the OS uses for virtually EVERYTHING.

Even CALLS between applications in exchanging data will pass XAML XPS information, let allow this is how the OS passes info to the Screen to Draw and the Pinter to Print.

GDI conversion layers are included for both way compatibility for Screen and Printer. i.e. your app uses XAML(WPF/XPS) to display something, but your driver only knows GDI, it will convert it.

Does everything Microsoft does have to be sinister?

How about this for a 'senerio'... For better performance and to take advantage of some of the new drawing capabilities in the WPF, chances are Adobe will even make a PDF reader for Windows that uses XAML/XPS/WPF to render the PDF information to the screen and the printer.

So does that make Adobe evil too?

These are such borderline (as a lot of people get them confused) concepts, but yet different. Metro is an extention of how elegant the new 3D Vector system built in Windows is - and also how different it is from anything Apple or anyone else has even attempted to do. Bascially when new applications for Windows are rendering cool graphics on the screen or printer, they are using XML in the from of XAML - which looks a lot like SVG, but has a 'chunk' of different abilities and purposes than SVG does.

So Metro is basically just saying, ok instead of drawing this to the screen, save it in a Document, a Metro Document - because the communication system for Graphic and any form of Media content throughout Windows is built in a simple and efficient XML format.

I though Slashdot like using concepts like XML?

And yet I've been doing this in OpenOffice

[bahwi]

for awhile now. Which is great, open up presentation, make one, and save it as a PDF makes for great easy marketing PDF's. =)

Not quite what you want but...

[Sycraft-fu]

Give ACrobat Speedup a try http://www.tnk-bootblock.co.uk/prods/misc/index.ph p to get it. Basically it turns off all the damn plugins that ACrobat loads by default. This does mean that some advanced stuff won't work but who cares? You never see PDFs with it anyhow.

It really does drop the loading time singificantly.

I can't believe it

[Trestop]

You actually said "simple and efficient" and "XML" in the same sentence. I would have shot myself after doing that. The current trend of "Its XML so its better" is really annoying. Specifically, everything which is changed to and XML based protocol becomes bloated and takes a lot more bandwidth to transmit and more processing power to read and use. It makes sense in some areas, such as certain internet protocols, but its makes no sense whatsoever in high-bandwidth/high-speed applications such as drawing to the screen. So, as to your questions, Microsoft is evil and Apple's Quartz is tons better.

Re:OpenOffice

[Daltorak]

XmlHttpRequest is a genuine Microsoft innovation. It's been around since 1999, but nobody really knew about it until Google created Gmail and people started disassembling Gmail's code wondering "how did they make it so f'ing fast?" Every other browser out there now implements a variation of this particular Microsoft technology; even Apple credits Microsoft for this.

Ok, so seriously, what is it with Mac users?

[Sycraft-fu]

And this odd need to go "Ooo look, Apple was t3h first!!!!111"

Who. Cares.

Ok, great, so Apple got PDF viewing back with OS 10 (please note it's viewing that's built in, MS is talking about PDF creation as well). How does that makes them special?

Also what's real intersting if you are all up on copying then what about the OS-X kernel? Rather than make their own, or buy one like BeOS, they decided to grab Mach and use that. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but there's no innovation there, it was copying, it was grabbing a product that already worked well and using it. For that matter so was PDF integration. Adobe is responasable for PDF, not Apple.

I fail to understand the reason behind these kind of posts that crop up on Slashdot all the time. Who cares if Apple did something before someone else? What relivance is it? As it happens Microsoft had a production 32-bit OS with full memory protection and preemption (NT 3.1) almost a decade before Apple did. But, really, who cares? That in no way diminshes OS-X or it's capabilities, and Microsoft wasn't the first by a longshot to have that.

So really, knock it off. Who cares who did what first? What's relivant is what's out NOW, and what's comming out in the near future. I don't care that Linux wasn't the first OS to have a nice GUI, I care that it NOW has a nice GUI that I can use. Trying to pretend something is better because it was first is silly.

Totally true!

[Inoshiro]

If only there was some kind of extensible document format that let people have it be both printable and viewable on a monitor! We'd have to let the style sheets cascade, but then we could even support things like text-to-speech from the same document meant for printing and viewing! Hey, why stop there, why not make it a markup language so that we can add other neat features, like hyper links!

Wow, though, that's a lot of standards work. We might need a standards body to oversee it. Maybe someday, people will start to encode information in this format so that we can view it comfortable on our monitors without fucking around with stupid documents.

  -=-

Sarcasm aside, it's totally not a technology issue -- it's a people issue. PDF has its place in forms you want printed off, because it currently has momentum. I have no idea why people resist using the alternate solutions which have added benefits beyond the PDF momentum.
    Bug the people who put up PDFs for use. People using PDFs where they should be using XML is lot like people using Shockwave flash where they should be using XML.

Re:So what does this do to thier "competing" forma

[Doppler00]

Well, Microsoft did extend their JVM with some extra ties into windows and classes that specifically made it easier to write Windows applications that were run under Java (but not write once, run anywhere). However, this was back at Java version 1.0. Microsoft totally didn't bother upgrading their JVM to support features in Java 1.2, and above. Thus, most computers were shipped with a crippled, outdated version of Java.

The problem is, that most web java apps were based on this crippled version of Java. Since that's the case, if you're a web developer you're not going to force people to upgrade your version, so you just stay with what comes standard on Windows. In this way, Microsoft prevented Sun's Java from gaining a significant foothold on Windows.

Re:So what does this do to thier "competing" forma

[killjoe]

Wow, that was the most breathless shilling I have seen in a long time. So MS took SVG and did an embrace and extend and it's AWESOME!. Yea right.

Could create a new PDF but not with your signature

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Adobe's spec allows you to embed a digital signature in a PDF.

PDF read/write...it's been here a while

[Arru]

Making PDFs Read/Write would torpedo a LOT of current practices.

Well then it's time to kiss the current practices goodbye! PDFs have been read/write for a number of years with apps like Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand. With formatting completely preserved, too.

As other posts have pointed out, document signing is the only real way to proof documents. Your mention of a major engineering firm "securing" documents this way makes me feel kind of uneasy...

Re:How "native"? Importing too?

[1u3hr]

Making PDFs Read/Write would torpedo a LOT of current practices.

Duh. PDFs have been read/write since day 1. The format was aimed at the publishing industry, and if you look up "PDF workflow" you'll find a lot of tools for editing PDFs. That some clueless people who think "Acrobat READER" is the only thing that can open them imagine that makes them a locked, one-way format is laughable, but sadly common. That's why there are digital signing tools for PDFs. But just as easily you could encrypt and sign any document format, from plain text on up.

It would just be funny, except when these idiots discover their assumed security doesn't exist, they panic and claim anyone who edits PDFs must be a hacker, and demand the format be changed to make it impossible. So I wonder if MS's PDF's will be "embraced and extended" with features to fuck up such use, making a whole new mess of incompatibility with standard PDFs, and nightmares for prepress people given a bunch of MS-PDFs to output.

Re:So what does this do to thier "competing" forma

[bsartist]

Microsoft totally didn't bother upgrading their JVM to support features in Java 1.2, and above.

Slow down on the spin, you're making me dizzy. Sun *sued* Microsoft over breach of contract, because MS added classes to the java.* package. The license specified that any vendor-added classes had to live outside the official name space, so Sun won the lawsuit and got an injunction that prevented MS from distributing future versions.

Microsoft prevented Sun's Java from gaining a significant foothold on Windows.

Sun prevented Java from gaining a significant foothold on Windows, not MS. Sun was embarrassed because MS's JVM for Windows was faster than Sun's own, and acted out of sheer spite with the ammunition they had on hand.

Re:Now if only...

[boa13]

SWF an open format? WTF since when?

I don't know when they started publishing the format, it's been some time. Note that the keyword here is "open", used in the same way as fifteen years ago, when it only meant you could look inside the machine and were limited in what you could make with the information. It is very remote from open source or free software, or even standards.

You have to agree to a licence to get the Flash specification. You notably have to agree to use the information only to generate Flash files, and not play them. That's all you can get for free. I don't know if you can pay to get a licence to create Flash players, or if Macromedia reserves that right for themselves exclusively.

Here's Macromedia licencing page: http://www.macromedia.com/licensing/developer/

Ha Ha Adobe!

[JPriest]

I hate Adobe Acrobat reader more and more every single day. That application has one simple task and it is quickly growing to a 40 meg, ad-displaying, nagware mammoth. Adobe reader persistantly wants to be in Windows startup and nags me to download a seemingly endless string of updates.

I have always said that pdf support is one area where Linux smokes Windows hands down. I have wanted someone (anyone) else to give me some alternitave to reader for Windows for a long time.

Take your ad-ware bundled bloated crap elsewhere Adobe! When MS says they have had high demand to support the format I believe them.

are you saying...

[goombah99]

I don't use windows, but it sounds like this is saying there's no current way to print a PDF document in windows from every application without some third party add-on? Is that really true?

I'm in disbelief! for years now I've been asking people to "send me a PDF" of their word or whatever document assuming Windows had this like. Apparently that must be difficult to do on windows?

Amazing. Well we mac users can feel smug about something else now. Welcome to the modern age windows users. heh.

What's with the ranting?

[Craig Ringer]

This is very odd. I've seen almost no comments along the lines of "Yay, native PDF support in this software that lots of people use, now maybe they'll stop emailing me bloody word docs."

Rather, there's lots of ranting about innovation, and lots of people saying that $[software] did it first. Yep, sure. I have an unpleasant revelation for you - *none* of the software industry is exactly a powerhouse of innovation. They all implement ideas that came from each other, improve them or butcher them along the way, and try to compete. OO.o may have had PDF export first, but it's UI is a bad clone of an even worse UI (Office '97). Office might be picking up PDF export pretty late in the game, but on the other hand it looks like they're working to fix the train wreck that is office suite user interfaces. Similarly, Apple and Microsoft are busy chasing each other, nicking each other's ideas, and coming up with the odd good one along the way. Arguing about who is most innovative is just not interesting. Ideas come from all the involved parties, and everybody steals them. Big deal.

To me, this just looks like MS doing something sensible, often requested by customers, and perhaps long overdue. It's beyond me why all the comments here are so overwhelmingly negative.

Slashdot isn't usually this bad, folks. What's gotten into this bunch today?

For those talking about printer-driver based PDF export, it's not that simple. Here's what I posted earlier. Summary: OS based would be nice, but a simple generic print interface would be insufficiently flexible so something more would be needed anyway. Anyway, if they built PDF export into the OS, I bet this crowd would be screaming about monopolies, bundling, and anticompetitive business practices.

I find all this pretty disappointing. There are posts on the forum thread with the new user interface screenshots that are foaming crazy, and they all prominently say "I support open source!" or rant about OSS. Yet so many folks here wonder why nobody is interested in listening when someone has something constructive and rational to say. I begin to wonder if the crazies are the loud majority, rather than the loud minority...

Re:So what does this do to thier "competing" forma

[jonbryce]

Openoffice.org and WordPerfect Office have had pdf support for long enough. They are only catching up with competition. I don't think that is anti-competitive.

Re:How "native"? Importing too?

[1u3hr]

Does this mean it will have PDF-import capabilities too?

It would be possible to make valid PDFs that included the Word doc file as a resource. Users would open such a file in Word and edit it, then save it as MS-PDF again. After a while users would get used to this, even setting Word as the default app for PDFs, and this would lead to people saying "There's something wrong with your PDF (from OpenOffice/WordPerfect/etc), I can't open it in Word...." following their time-worn Embrace/Extend/Extinguish strategy.

Re:M$ version of PDF

[strider44]

the PDF file has to adhere to strict standards before you can call it PDF. Adobe owns the trademarks and I doubt they'd let Microsoft extend the format.

Re:Native PDF Support

[Scum]

The PDF printer driver though is part of the full Acrobat product costing hundreds of dollars although occasionally it gets bundled in with scanner software or other printer drivers. It's not part of the free to download Acrobat reader.

PDF Printer is only really a small fraction of the native PDF support in the Mac. There's a whole PDF workflow including conversions between PDF formats, other image formats, colorspaces and pre-flighting for the print industry, all scriptable via Applescript and Automator. Again, all native in the OS. If Microsoft are putting this in Office, it's in the wrong place as it should be at the OS level to be useful.

Massachusetts

[segedunum]

This is a response to the decision by Massachusetts, make no mistake. Microsoft have probably had some PDF support for some time but haven't released it. What this allows Microsoft to do is strong-arm Massachusetts into accepting Office based on PDF support, while at the same time all their employees will save in the default format which is of course the Office one.

However, that isn't going to work because Massachusetts have specifically stated that they want their documents in Open Document format or PDF by default - they don't want the option of saving to them while some Office suite goes off and does its own thing bypassing them.

Re:Office 12 Screenshots

[Seraphnote]

About PDF, my thought is the same as many, ABOUT TIME!
About OpenDocument format, we ought to start a pool on how many versions it will be before they "listen to their customers" for that request.
(And why don't some Open developers whip up a plugin for Office to allow OpenDocument support for Office?)

BUT WHAT I FIND MOST INTERESTING, IS Office 12's ENTIRELY NEW and RE-ARRANGED INTERFACE!!

Its NOT JUST AN UPGRADE!
Its a WHOLE NEW USER EXPERIENCE, which means...

...THERE'S NO REASON CORPORATE USERS CAN'T BE SWITCHED TO OpenOffice, StarOffice, or any other Office!

There is no way a corporation can "drop" Office 12 into place without people first being trained! (Well they could, and probably will, but to their non-techie users it'll be a shock!)

Thank-you Microsoft! For once again giving us innovation to do the same work an entirely different way!
(But now we have another good reason to look at alternate brands for that "entirely different way"!)

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