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MS Four Points of Interoperability and Adobe
Andy Updegrove writes "Recently, spokespersons for Microsoft's standards group have been promoting 'design, collaboration and licensing' as alternatives, rather than supplements to, open standards. There's an important difference between an open standard and any of these ad hoc arrangements among companies, however, and that is the fact that with a standard, everybody knows that they can get what everybody else can get, and on substantially the same terms. With a de facto standard, that's not the case - as Microsoft itself found out last week when Adobe refused to offer the same deal on saving files in PDF form that Apple and OpenOffice enjoy."
Gee a coperation is trying to ensure that the market remains in a state of monopolistic competition instead of perfect competition. Big surprise!
Philosophy.
FOUR points!
I forget who I am talking about though!?
I think Microsoft is just getting a taste of its own medicine. If you're going to try and monopolize a field, you should expect your competitors to fight back the same way.
So we'll just download CutePDF for free. Next problem.
What if Adobe realized that MS was probably going to bastardize their PDF and simply didn't want MS to have a free reign with it?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
I have used a postscript printer driver, print-> save to file, then ps2pdf to make pdf files in the past when I did not have the Adobe software. Works fine and is free.
This is silly for Adobe to not let MS use pdf functionality. How is it even up to Adobe if the specification is out there for anyone to use? For once, it seems like MS should just include this function for the common good.
I wonder if MS is spinning "the breakdown of talks" so that they don't need an actual useful standard in office, so they can push their "pdf killer". The only thing that will kill PDF is a big old EMP...
I was under the impression that the PDF file format was an open standard and that Adobe Acrobat was proprietary software that could create and manipulate PDF files. In other words, if you would like for your software to work with PDF files you can either license code from them (some form of Acrobat) or roll your own.
I guess I was misunderinformed?
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
If I want to send someone a .doc file right now, I can use (for example), MS Office or Open Office to get the job done. If I want to send a pdf, I either use Open Office, or I have to buy Adobe's Standard Edition to get a plugin for MS Office.
.pdf.
.pdf support into Office 2007, I can't see .pdf leaping forward in terms of a distribution format for documents.
So given that I exclusively use MS Office at work (say what you will, but the licensing program for colleges is decent value), I'm unlikely to want to pay extra £££s to use
Now that MS will apparently not bundle native
Are Adobe trying to shoot themselves in the foot on this, or am I missing something crucial?
yeah, like anybody is going to trust a company that bundles spyware with their products
The big question is who's going to be hurt by this... and I suppose that it'll be Microsoft Office users... I'd bet that the resulting PDFs from MS's implementation would probably be a bit more efficient than some of the "print to PDF" programs available for free.
Unless, of course, MS was "embracing and extending" and their PDFs look as horrible as their Save as HTML documents.
My understanding is that if Adobe is talking about taking Anti-Trust action against Microsoft it isn't Adobe acting as "the inventors of PDF" it's Adobe acting as "the leading seller of PDF solutions". The fact that they have a special relationship to the PDF format is incidental to the proposed action.
They're complaining that Microsoft is destroying a market by bundingly software functionality with their system. Is this in any way different than when Microsoft bundled IE to hurt Netscape? If so, can someone explain it to me?
A serious question: when has a company's non-standard product significanly benefited the consumer? Or indeed the public at large?
Now, I don't mean standard and in "usual" - I mean standard as in "Serving as or conforming to a standard of measurement or value".
For example, those non-standard screws on some electronic devices. The manufacturer would have you believe that those are there to protect the integrity and quality of the product: but I think they just serve to obfuscate and generate revenue for the manufacturer.
After all, how would it be a bad thing if all MP3 players conformed to standard guidelines for portable devices? How would it be a bad thing if I could build and expand my own MP3 player adding features (like a camera or microphone) and enhancing it's function? How would it be a bad thing if all MP3 players ran a standard software operating system of some sort?
How would that be bad for the consumer?
It would seem to me that perhaps standards mean less choice for the manufacturers and more choice for the consumers. Since the opposite is likely true, I would argue this is must be why standards are so difficult to agree upon.
--
Music should be free
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
It seems like Acrobat is falling from it's peak. I know the PDF format is a defacto standard. However, the Adobe seems to be having problems on some fronts. One thing I've noticed, and I realize this is a loose correlation, is that when a company starts to fall it's products start to come with some interesting "features".
Real Player: Naging upgrade notices whenver you didn't have the most recent version. Hard to find "free" version. Addware in the install.
AIM has come with it's own supply of programs, ranging from advertising AOL Explorer to some programs it installed to play AIM mini games (I've forgoten which one since I uninstalled it a while ago, but it set off alerts in Ad-Aware)
Yahoo!: Cluttered their home page with a whole bunch of adverts.
Adobe: Acrobat Reader now tries to install Yahoo! Toolbar by default.
Just seems like whenever a company starts bundling adds and addware programs with their software they start to fall from grace. Anyone have any other examples of software companies tanking like that?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
It fears for the souvereignity over their own format. As funny as it may sound.
Say MS includes PDF writing (and maybe reading) ability into Word. And MS decides that its PDF can also support any arbitrary feature that Adobe didn't plan to implement.
Suddenly, Adobe would have to redo MS's work to stay compatible to its own format! Yes, it wouldn't be "official" standard, but since MS-Office is so widely used, whatever MS-Word sets as the PDF standard would be the de facto standard.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, the way I see it MS aren't bundling PDF software with their system - they were planning on including it with Office. I don't see how anti-trust applies in that case, as other office suites already do the same (eg OOo), so they're not using their monopoly position in OSes to push into another area (PDF creation tools), they're just following the same path as their nearest competitor.
Of course, IANAL, so perhaps anti-trust law really does prevent them from doing that, although it wouldn't seem fair (assuming that the purpose of anti-trust law is to prevent unfair competition, not prevent any competition at all).
It's official. Most of you are morons.
You know there are other free alternatives for creating PDF files on the windows platform besides Adobe Std. Edition, right?
>> If I want to send a pdf, I either use Open Office, or I have to buy Adobe's Standard Edition to get a plugin for MS Office.
Or you can use PDFCreator which is a free program that lets you print to a pdf file.
Normally I'd be against any big company refusing to license standards like this, but the hell with it – this is Microsoft we're talking about, and I'd have to say that siding with Adobe on this one's probably the lesser of two evils. I have to agree with them, really – Microsoft really is just overstepping their lines, and I hope that eventually one of the anti-trust things finally does succeed against them.
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
There's two very good reasons for Adobe denying easy PDF functionality to Microsoft Office users. One is obvious and good only for Adobe, but the other is subtle and better for everybody in the long run.
The obvious reason? Adobe wants to be able to sell Acrobat Pro to its users, and if Microsoft starts bundling the functionality in Office, Office users will have less reason to buy Acrobat or the Creative Suite.
Note: I said less reason, not no reason. See, Acrobat is more than Distiller. The full Acrobat program will let you take those PDFs you've created by whatever means, resequence the pages, add footnotes... organize the whole document. You could do that in Word, but you could end up with a single huge document, and Word isn't happy working that way. The full kit lets you shuffle pages, up to and including replacing single pages in a PDF if you must.
The other reason has to do with Microsoft's hamfisted, even predatory way of "supporting" other peoples' standards. How does that sequence go, again? Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, Extort? Picture the Microsoft PDF format, in the same ridiculing manner that you'd consider Microsoft RTF, Microsoft HTML, and Microsoft XML: misshapen parodies of their former, more open, more rational selves. By denying Microsoft the opportunity to implement the standard, Adobe protects it for themselves and anyone else who adheres to it.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Play out the scenarios. Ask yourself what Adobe could usefully say in that situation. Microsoft can't openly vandalize .pdf just yet, for reasons we all know too well, so this move just lets them make Adobe look bad. It's a set up for later. It's a damn shame all Adobe's other options are worse.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
As someone who was there at the time, MS was killing NS with IE _before_ it got bundled into the OS. IE was the better browser, by far. NS (Navigator/Communicator 3 and past) was an abomination.
The thing is, as I see it, adobe were happy for Openoffice and apple to use their formats, it provides them with greater userbase who use pdf's, and that's good for business. Neither of these two groups are likely to alter the format. Linux has plenty of pdf tools, and adobe have no issue with this. They control the format themselves, and none of the pdf work happening for linux is in anyway threatening, it's just useful to adobe, as it gets their format widely used, keeping it in the public eye. Microsoft need pdf more than adobe need microsoft is what it boils down to. Microsoft want a product to rival or replace the pdf. If they have pdf as a save option, but also their own format, then users get to choose. If pdf is better then the mircosoft format, then people will use that, but what happens when microsoft start bigging up their own format? Well they 'played fair', and included the pdf option, and yes customers used it, but it becomes 'no longer recommended', and msword issue a harmless (but consistant) warning that some features of your Word originated document may not translate well to pdf, and users stop saving to pdf... If vista can view the microsoft format without additional tools, then users will take the shortest/easiest path, and eventually ignore pdf as a save option, killing adobe pdf as a tool used by business. I imagine that's the plan anyway, and I think this is what adobe are thinking. Alas microsoft have consistantly failed to get the interoperability argument. They see the solution as 'well, everyone should use our stuff then'. That isn't the answer. This is all academic to me though, I dumped M$office last year for Openoffice, and have no plan to buy office 12 or Vista.
There are very very few details about this, only one statement by Microsoft blaming Adobe. Sounds like FUD to me. Most likely Adobe is pissed because MS is trying to *ahem* "extend" the open standard. We've seen plenty of examples of this before.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Does anyone else think it's possible that the whole Microsoft XML Paper Specification "PDF rival" was invented purely as a bargaining tool against Adobe -- something to threaten them with if Adobe don't agree to let them put PDF functionality into Office?
Think about the timing. They revealed that they were making XPS just before they needed to get the relevant permission from Adobe. If it's *not* just a bargaining stunt, then this is incredibly stupid timing by Microsoft - angering Adobe before having to beg their permission. I don't think MS is that stupid. If it is, then if MS they play their cards close to their chest, they can get the necessary permission from Adobe by offering to drop XPS -- permission that they might not have got otherwise.
nd very much doesn't want.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Microsoft has, so far, been completely unwilling to make themselves compatible with formats such as OpenDocument for the explicit purpose of keeping their own proprietary format the "standard" and stifling their competition. But now that they see a semi-open format that's popular, viable, and really does suit a lot of common purposes much better than anything else available, they suddenly want in on the action. Sounds like a double standard if ever I've heard one. I'm not entirely thrilled with any restriction on open formats and interoperability; but with a situation like this, where a company like Microsoft is clearly trying to profit from it on the one hand while killing it with the other, I'm completely in favor of letting them get a taste of their own medicine.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
I think that PDF is a great standard but the Adobe Acrobat that you currently pay for is a horrible application.
This is a product costing hundreds of dollars (i have pro), it's buggy, doesnt work well with firefox, the process will just hang there soaking the CPU for all it's worth after it's reader application is closed, jilts me with pop up windows telling me there are updates and when I go to install them gives me errors every time. It sucks.
PDF995 for example does the same thing more reliably than the developer of the PDF standard for free (ad supported) or for $10 if you want to get rid of the ads.
Adobe I think here is making a huge mistake, they should just license the damn format to Microsoft for a $20 per unit royalty under a restriction that MSFT doesnt include their "pdf-killer" format and ditch the Acrobat pro line.
In picking this fight with Microsoft now they certainly have awoken the sleeping dragon and I'm sure they are pissed. Allowing Apple and Sun to do something (MSFTs biggest competitors) but changing the rules for Microsoft?
The Gates borg army has been on R&R for a while but I think he's going to restore all the troops into active duty to kill Adobe now. Expect Microsoft to release a really good professional grade video and graphics suites while railing hard against PDF with their new format.
bubye Adobe, was nice to know ya!
One benefit to .pdf is that it will look the same in anyone's viewer, whether Evince or Foxit or Acrobat. A .doc will look different viewed in OOo or Abi or even in different versions of MS Word.
.pdf if it's in MS Office, then you're not a customer of Adobe and they really don't care. There's enough .pdfs floating around without MS Office support that Adobe doesn't have to worry about demand. What Adobe's worried about is if a program that about 90% of people have can make .pdfs, then will anyone actually buy their .pdf maker? You wouldn't buy it anyways, so you don't count, but what about the people who would?
.pdf, so they shouldn't be able to change the rules for Microsoft. It's obvious why they're doing it, and if they're successful I hope it helps OOo, but I think it's shitty.
Anyways, if you don't care about that benefit, and would likely only use
Of course, I think it's all bullshit. They let Apple and OOo use
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
Remember folks, Microsoft is developing their own page presentation format (formerly "Metro", now xps) that's going to compete directly with pdf. Remember what happened when Microsoft decided they wanted their own audio codec? They made wma the default format in Windows Media Player, but also included annoyingly limited "support" for mp3. Whenever a user ripped a CD to mp3 format, WMP would pop up a nag screen suggesting that they use wma instead, and if the user ignored the suggestion, he got a nasty-sounding 64kbps file.
I suspect they planned to include crippled pdf support in Office 2007 with bloated output, arbitrary resolution limits, and nag screens suggesting that using xps would make the document look better. Adobe (unlike Fraunhofer) saw what MS was doing, and told them to bug off.
0 1 - just my two bits
In the news : "Microsoft will emerge a new standard called :"throwing chairs in the right directions"". I bet they will ensure that the market remains in a state of monopolistic competition there too!
No sig for now.
I don't get this argument by Adobe. This software, PDFCREATOR, is free and lets you convert any document (including MS Office documents) to PDF.
What's the big deal? Is it that Adobe knows most users don't know that you don't have to buy Adobe Acrobat to make a PDF?
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Have you tried PDFCreator? It gives you a printer that lets you make .pdf files from any Windows application. See here.
Now this means Microsoft has to come up with something else similar to PDF to fulfill it's needs. End result, the release of Vista will mean the end of PDF. Well, it probably wont happen that smoothly, but it is in Adobe's best interests to have as much of the market share as possible. With MS's huge market share, having MS on your side means you have 85% of the market by default, not having MS on your side means you're limited to no more then 85% of the market.
I'm sure Adobe is counting on people making a DL from them for just a reader, but whenever I used windows I intentionally avoided PDF's because the Adobe reader is a huge bloated piece of crap. It would be great for everyone if PDF was integrated into the system like it is on Macs.
If you can't see PDF taking off as a document distribution format, have another look at near enough every single install disk you get. Enclosed instruction manuals. Downloaded user manuals from manufacturers that provide them.
Have a look at most places that actually distribute information to the public. You'll find they have a large amount of PDF, simply because they can guarantee it being read, not falling foul of proxy filter rules (yes, lots of proxies filter out Word docs, as they are still perfectly good ways of transmititng executable content).
Word documents are a way of storing files internal to a business, and perhaps between a few businesses.
Distribution on a larger scale is PDF. This is something Microsoft could do without. Seriously do without. I daresay they'll funnel money into a doc to PDF converter through a shell company and feed it marketing money.. But not having it in the core product is painful (it would be similar to having Windows Media Player barred from ripping to or reading MP3s).
Printing to PDF is already supported by printer drivers and by things like OOo saving natively. Adobe basically put the specs out, and then allowed a competitor of Microsoft's to freely use their functionality, but they don't like Microsoft doing so.
The greater question is what does Microsoft want to do with the Open Standard PDF. There is certain functionality of PDF that is included in the standard, and then are other parts that set it apart from the Adobe Acrobat Distiller product. Much of Adobe's use of PDF is set around print production and such is proprietary to their products. Many of these features do not react the way you would expect in program's like Apple's preview or other PDF viewers. There are a number of compression technologies that are not accessible outside of Acrobat Distiller. The question in my mind is does Microsoft want to include proprietary functions in their save to PDF functionality, or are they simply trying to print a PDF to a file?
If Microsoft is just going to use the open standard then there is not much Adobe can do. Example, Apple removed Display PostScript from the developer previews of Mac OS X because they did not want to pay for the licensing involved with Display PostScript. Instead they built their display model on the open PDF standard. They do not use Adobe code in their product.
Now that said if you open a complex Adobe PDF in Apple's preview IT WILL NOT LOOK CORRECT, especially if their is transparency in the document.
The other end of the spectrum is, does Microsoft want to "embrace and extend" the tehnology much like they did with JAVA, basically bastardazing the product and killing it for all intents and purposes so that they can push their own technology.
A PDF that doesn't open in Adobe Reader is pretty much useless. Microsoft doesn't make a PDF reader, so there's no reason for them to "extend" the PDF spec.
Now, I suppose it's possible that MS will create PDFs that open slowly, or cause Reader to crash sometimes or something foul of that nature. But it's more likely that Adobe is just freaking out because of the potential lost revenue.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
This doesn't seem particularly interesting, because it's PDF.
.NET "standard", so this is reminding me to just be extra-sure that I don't give MS any way to embrace and extend.
However, I've got something I'm developing that may eventually inspire some sort of standard, and I'm also using the
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
PDF is a static or finalized output for documents not intended to be edited by the end user, except for adding mark-ups. It can be changed, but not as easily as taking someone's .doc and making changes.
I am using OO.org 2.0.2 and it features bookmarks and I have not installed any macros at all. In the .pdf export dialogue there is an option to make the pdf tagged.
There are substantially cheaper ways of implementing PDF functionality in Office then buying Adobe's Acrobat product just for a plugin. If you want to use a commercial product, there is always http://www.pdf995.com/ which is substantially cheaper than Acrobat. There is also http://sector7g.wurzel6.de/pdfcreator/index_en.htm for substantially cheaper still. Neither of these products are going to give you the wizbang super duper features Acrobat does but, you know what, they aren't missed 99% percent of the time unless you job entails sending print once documents which are also forms with drop-down lists that need umpteen different encryption schemes tacked onto them and self-destruct when the moon is inline with Jupiter on the summer solstice.
Cliff
sigs are like a box of chocolates, they all suck remove the underscores to email me
Microsoft's Four Points of Interoperability:
1. Mine.
2. Mine.
3. MINE.
4. MINE!
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Are any of these likely? We'll almost certainly have an answer by the time Vista comes out, and quite possibly by the time XP or 2003 have another service pack. We do know for certain that they've never liked being spurned and their competitors have a strange habit of dying terrible deaths.
Are Adobe aware of this? Oh, almost certain. They're almost guaranteed to be just as aware that allies of Microsoft have an equally strange reduction in their life expectancy. In the most recent case, Microsoft worked with anti-virus companies then bought one out and produced their own. Oddly, it seems to recognize some of the competing anti-virus products as hostile and destroy them. Curious, that.
My guess is that Adobe takes the line that if they're going to die, they might as well die with their boots on, and there's a slim chance Microsoft won't dare crush them with all of the other anti-trust cases going on, but that if they go with Microsoft, they don't stand a chance. That's based on what has visibly occurred, however, and Adobe's actual (but not necessarily stated) reasons may be very different.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Thank you! This is my biggest problem with people trying to use PDF files as an interchangeable document format. For finalized, rendered output, it is a great thing. The problem comes when you try to pass a PDF file around to a group of people to make edits on. While it can be done to some degree, it is not nearly as good (or as easy for the less technically inclinded) as editing the original Word (or plaintext, or whatever) document. The original goal of PDF was to give equal representation of the final output on all platforms, and for this, it does very well.
This guy's the limit!
All we have is MS preliminary press blitz. We don't know what the sticking point is. PDF is essentially open, but presumably has some usage license.
I can't see a recourse for action unless Microsoft wants to violate that usage license. Perhaps the license precludes Microsofts usual answer to standards (embrace, extend, then envelop).
"Association for Competitive Technology" is also quoted in the article as an unbiased source. But if you check sourcewatch.org you will find they are actually a Microsoft initiated astroturfing group.
Why does the media lap this stuff up?
How is Office not being able to save PDF files good for the consumer? There are already a dozen apps that can do so (including the often licked by /. crowd OS X, Open Office and Corel). No one has to pay Adobe to make PDF's - they only choose to.
This is purely Adobe trying to milk a cash cow - because MS won't charge (for a supposedly open royalty-free document standard!!!) and hand over kickbacks, Adobe is taking their ball and going home.
The worst part is that as usual, because it's MS versus *anyone*, MS somehow ends up being the villain. I really don't get it - this is a website for computing. Computation is pure logic. You'd think that a bunch of computer users would be logical. Not the case.
PS: any lawyers reading this post? You are the problem with this world. Punch yourself in the groin.
Microsoft seems to be playing the wounded duck at the moment, trying to convince the public that Adobe won't allow them to implement PDF creation as a standard feature in their Office 2007 and Vista environments.
However, Adobe has published the Portable Document Format specifications since 1993, encouraging developers to create applications that both read and *write* PDF files. From page seven of the PDF Reference, Fifth Edition (v1.6, PDF format) we see the following:
My guess would be that in typical Microsoft style, they are probably wanting to create their own incompatable extensions to PDF and Adobe has stepped-in and said no to them.
The "here be binary" tags in MS "open" XML clearly go against the spirit of XML and render MS documents effectively proprietary. Sure, the XML parts are documented, but only MS can properly interpret the binary blobs.
Where does DRM and MS's wholesale use of it fall into this argument? Anywhere?
If MS were going to license my format, then bash it up till only MS could really read it with the DRM inside it, that would be monopolistic in my view, and I'd have to say that I agree with Adobe on this if that is the case, or anything even reasonably similar. Its not like MS hasn't done the same in all its other dealings (more or less).
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
PDF is great for pre-press, but it's the rare user that is actually is preparing a file for printing on a high-quality press (or even know how to build a proper multi-color PDF document.) Most user create PDF's when they want to ensure the formatting will work across different printers or are reluctant to distribute the source document (especially with Word or PowerPoint.)
Frequently, I create PDF's so that the original can't be modified.
Adobe will probably own the pre-press market, but is scared of loosing the low-end to an integrated product.
It's not like Acrobat is a cash cow for Adobe or anything! Most people in my workplace only know about Acrobat for making PDFs and snub their noses at anything "free software" because they equate it with shareware. By including PDF support in office Microsoft wipes a good 10%++ easily from Adobe's sales. Apple has PDF because they are co-owners of postscript with adobe.. so much of the early work for photoshop and such was done between Adobe and Apple that Apple has a cross-license for the techonology. OpenOffice.org and all the free PDF makers only use the open parts of the specs. There's quite a bit of the DRM stuff that they can't use because it's not all open and that pesky DMCA. Also, many of the projects are not US based so their rules are slightly different. Now that Adobe is abandoning Apple for windows, they're getting really scared Microsoft will finish cutting them off!!
Mod this parent up, please.
To those who keep attempting to compare integration of PDF in Office to MS' bastardization of Java, remember, MS is not making a PDF reader. The PDFs they made HAVE to work in existing PDF readers in order to function, as such they will be well-formed PDFs. Office 2007 beta 2 still retains the feature, so give it a try for yourself.
IE was better when?!? NS had fully functional ftp support when IE 2.0 didn't. How's THAT better? Netscape always rendered compliant pages where IE couldn't, until something like 6.x. For someone alleging to be there at the time, I think you probably spent most of that time nodding off heroin, because your facts as stated simply aren't true. As for IE killing NS, that didn't happen UNTIL MS bundled it onto the OS, THATS how, in part, IE was able to conquer NS, by being available, and ubiquitous on said platform.
At the risk of being redundant, I would just like to say that Apple does NOT license PDF from Adobe (OO I'm not so sure since it originates in Star Office which is from Sun). Adobe wanted Apple to license PDF back when the Quartz PDF graphic engine replaced the Postscript graphic engine (which was licensed from Adobe) from the NeXT days, but Apple declined and instead based their engine on the openly available PDF standard. This is also the reason that there are free PDF libraries for anything from Java to Perl. None of them are licensed but simply implement the standard.
Microsoft's attempt must use features that are not part of the standard, such as Layers or advanced color features.
Adobe is basically telling MS that you can't be trusted. I mean just look at the past when MS screwed companies like Borland and IBM. MS also has the habbit of embracing and "extend" a particular format.
I don't blame Adobe at all for doing this.
How much do you want to bet Microsoft flatly refused to bind themselves to writing .pdf's readable by code implementing only Adobe's spec?
Microsoft PM Brian Jones wrote about this:
You'll see that we really are trying to comply with the spec, and wouldn't have anything to gain by doing otherwise. Remember we are only a producer of this stuff (not a consumer), and doing anything non-compliant would just mean that our output would be flawed and not look right. That would of course undermine all the work we've done to build this support in the first place... we want people to use it.
This might be redundant, but here goes...
Now, I'm a die-hard Mac user, and a big OOo supporter, but let's face it-- they don't have a whole lot of market share. Very little, in fact, compared to Microsoft's products. Not only that, but the market share they do have is much more technology-oriented.
Picture this scenario. Boss Billy walks down to Jim in Accounting, and tells Jim that he wants the company's annual financial report in his inbox by 2:00 that afternoon. Oh, and make it a PDF. I'd be willing to bet you the first thought through Jim's mind isn't "Ooh, I'd better download OpenOffice" or "Let me download a copy of CutePDF." The average computer user isn't very enlightened concerning those kinds of things. What Jim will think is "Hmm, PDF... that's Adobe, isn't it? Let me run down to OfficeMax and buy it."
Adobe doesn't care if the relatively small percentage of Mac and OOo users has access to PDF support (as everyone is supposed to, if it truly is an open format), but if Office implements the technology, Microsoft has just started cutting into their Average Joe User market share-- which is where they make the most of their money I'm sure.
The other major portion of their market share probably comes from professional designers who need more power than what's provided by free Postscript printers and OpenOffice.org. If Office implements parts of the PDF standard that aren't found in the free products, that starts chipping away at another part of their market share. If Microsoft jumps on board with PDF (like everyone else did years ago), Adobe faces a very steep, very fast drop in their Acrobat market share.
So what do they do? They try to pull a Microsoft-style monopoly move and say "Oh, yeah, that whole thing about open standard? That doesn't apply to you. We really own it." As they say, money talks, and if MS puts PDF support in office... to Adobe, money walks.
I think they know you cannot trust Microsoft as far as you can throw them. I bet they couldn't even pick up Steve Ballmer much less throw him.
The best part is Microsoft, having assumed Adobe's compliance, is having to change their stuff now to avoid an injunction against shipping next year. I'll give them a hint, Adobe knows how they treat their partners. Bygones may be bygones, but no one is forgetting the things they have done.
I think the pdf support in MS Office is a pitfall. There are bad things doomed to happen. For example, the script functionality of pdf in Adobe Acrobat is provided by embedding Spidermonkey javascript engine from mozilla.org, while in the MS Office, the only choice will be JScript from Windows Script Host. There are subtle differences between JScript and Javascript that prevent them from totally compatible. When MS Office begin to generate pdf, it will generate WSH compatible code, which will break Adobe Acrobat. Another step I can expec is that IE will support pdf native, and some pdf files generated by Acrobat won't work in the IE. As a result, when the MS Office pdf is omnipresent, there will be enough trouble for people, and all of us will have to give up Acrobat. As there will be no IE compatible pdf plugin for mozilla, firefox will loose pdf support too. Kill two birds with one stone.
Well, things can be different. If spidermonkey decide to support JScript or Adobe doesn't allow MS flirt with pdf, there won't be anything wrong.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
You may not know this, but the engine that Apple uses to convert PostScript to PDF and vice versa isn't Quartz. It's software licensed from Adobe. Apple paid $$$ for it.
If you had tried developing on NS back in the day of the 4.x versions, when it lost to IE, and were attempting anything non-trivial with JavaScript and DHTML, you'd know painfully well why it died -- it was the crashiest, render bug filled POS platform ever.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
From that link:
Standard PDF isFact is, they earned their reputation. A careful reading of what's in that post says volumes: nowhere in that do they promise not to. They don't consume it? Why is standard PDF "an option" then? What's going to read the non-standard PDF they can produce?
Here's what Microsoft needs to say:
And that, would be the end, of that.As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
I make PDFs from Microsoft Word, or any other program with print functionality, on Windows XP all the time. All it takes is PDFCreator. It can also output PNG, JPEG, BMP, PCX, TIFF, PostScript, and Encapsulated PostScript files (only single-page printouts should be made into PNGs, JPEGs, BMPs, and PCXes, however).
Our you could get PDFCreator from Sourceforge and print to PDF from any Windows application.
You forget your history. Netscape spent its cash on trying to shift from a browser to the Netscape network. That left no money in the warchest to fight MS.
Also, Netscapes browser absolutely sucked at handling manipulating the DOM. At a time when the web was beginning to make its first steps towards becoming the "Web 2.0" type landscape it is today, this was a serious problem. Web Developers HATED the thing.
AS for fully functional FTP. Who cares. Joe Average-Enduser doesn't use that feature. So its moot to argue that its inclusion in a browser makes that browser better.
ISO 19005-1 is PDF 1.4. The alternate version is probably the latest (1.6 IIRC). This is just FUD.
So much for all you open standards preachers.
Open to people you like, closed to others? You keep clinging to your unfounded assumption that MS would try to change or torpedo the standard if they were allowed to use it. Or any other lameass justification you can make up to try and not look like total hypocrites. Your lies are transparent.
Go Adobe!
It's nice to see someone standing up to MS.
The worst that could happen is Adobe goes out of business. Hmm. Copyright lasts a while after the death of the creator(don't know how that works with the death of a company). So, if Adobe doesn't want MS's stinky paws on its format, they still win. MS can't touch it for a looooong time.
In which time, MS will get bored with PDF and steal someone else's format.
"In a world that exists without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?"
One benefit to .pdf is that it will look the same in anyone's viewer, whether Evince or Foxit or Acrobat. A .doc will look different viewed in OOo or Abi or even in different versions of MS Word.
Well said. This is why I love PDFs. Any file format that can transcend multiple platforms and architectures and applications without altering the way the data is displayed / interpreted is excellent, in my opinion.
Do not mark in this space. For official office use only.
How about on Linux? I can print anything to a PostScript file easily enough, and ps2pdf is a part of Ghostscript and available on most systems. In fact, KDE includes an easy "Print to PDF File" option. So is this licensed for $$$ from Adobe, or is it just another free, conforming PDF-writing app? And if the latter, couldn't someone hook the same functionality into Windows easily enough?
I said they earned it. I offered an idea that I think would help them shed that load.
Want to argue they didn't earn it?
Want to argue that wouldn't drain a lot of it?
Want to argue why it would be a bad move?
In short, want to actually address the point?
Any time. Give it your best shot. I'll give you the last word.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
I'm a Mac OS X user, so I can generate a PDF of everything and I do use it quite a bit. But for my business, PDF is very limiting. I would like to be able to generate PDF files from within a web-application. However, internally a PDF document is a mess. I for one would welcome an overlord who gave us a open alternative.
In regular use, I do encounter various problems when copying text from a PDF. Spaces may be missing between words (you really don't want that) and yesterday I saw two big fat dots instead of spaces. Again, if there is an alternative, I'm off.
So, now MS comes up with an XML based standard, but I will not use what they come up with until it is both good AND they behave themselves.
Bert
The hypocrisy on this site is astounding.
6 /02/XPSAdobe.aspx/ 02/613702.aspx/ 03/616022.aspx
Consider this:
1. Adobe's market share in PDF creation software is similar to Microsoft's marketshare in desktop OSes for intel-compatible CPUs. Therefore, one could argue that Adobe has a "monopoly" in pdf creation software (not 100% share, but nearly so). But to keep some of you from bitching about the use of the term "monopoly" in this case, I'll use the term "quasi-monopoly".
2. Adobe, wanting to protect their "quasi-monopoly", was willing to allow Microsoft Office 2007 to export PDF if Microsoft charged extra for that functionality so as to not undercut the price of Adobe's own PDF creation software. In other words, Adobe wanted to engage in price-fixing with Microsoft in order to protect Adobe's quasi-monopoly. That is what you guys are supporting! Do you really want to go down that road? Surely you'll want to rethink your position, or does your hypocrisy really go that far?
3. Microsoft wasn't bastardizing PDF. What would be the point, since Microsoft is not producing any PDF reader? Since Microsoft isn't creating their own reader, any PDF document producted by Microsoft Office would have to be readable by other readers (and printable by printers), so why bastardize the format? Think logically.
4. If you want to see an example of the PDF produced by Office 2007, try Office 2007 beta 2. Or you can read the PDF version of the latest draft of the OpenXML ECMA spec, a PDF document that was created by Office 2007 beta. Guess what, it's perfectly readable by Acrobat Reader and any other PDF compliant reader.
5. Regarding XPS, XPS is a PDF competitor based on XML, but includes many advances over the current PDF spec (though future PDF specs may add such advances). XPS is part of Vista; XPS's role in Vista is similar to PDF's role in Mac OS X. Microsoft has shared with Adobe info on XPS for several years. Now Microsoft, bending over backwards to allay Adobe's hypocritcal paranoia, is removing from Office 2007 built-in support for both PDF and XPS. Furthermore, Microsoft is leaving it up to OEMs as to whether they want to include XPS support in Vista itself (except for XPS's role as a spool file format for Vista's printing enhacements).
6. Lastly, Microsoft is still going to provide PDF and XPS export support in Office 2007 as free downloadable plug-ins. Adobe's still pissed about this because they want Microsoft to charge for the plug-ins (more of the price-fixing scheme that you guys are supporting).
See these links for sources of the above info:
http://blogs.msdn.com/andy_simonds/archive/2006/0
http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/06
http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/06
Lastly, please don't you (or the state of MA) ever refer to PDF as "open" in the future. If it's not open for all, then it's not truly open, period.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Microsoft also lost their case regarding integrating things into Windows 95. The appeals court overturned it on the technicality that Microsoft had renamed the product Windows 98.
Now, they have lost cases in the past and been forced to back things out relatively quickly. Their piracy of disk compression tools in DOS 6.0 forced them to release 6.2 with those tools absent. Assorted tools in Windows 5.0 that carried the copyright of others were also amazingly missing from 6.2. Then there was the Java fiasco, where they "embraced and extended" rather beyond their license to do so. There are probably more recent examples of cases where they've lost and had to remove stuff as a result. So, yes, it can happen and has happened. The question then becomes one of whether Microsoft has learned not to do that, or whether they've merely learned not to be quite so obvious about it. My hope is the former, my fear is the latter.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Microsoft doesn't make a PDF reader... yet! YET!!!.
They don't make a PDF writer yet either.
Certainly, securing the rights to add propritary tags to written PDFs (preferably first under some innocent-looking senario) would be the first step in doing either.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
This is not to say that they will do any of these things. I've neither seen nor heard any evidence that Microsoft is going to "knife the baby" the way they have done with other companies they didn't see eye-to-eye with. My knowledge is limited to the fact that they have "knifed the baby" with other companies and have therefore demonstrated a capacity to think in such terms. I think it reasonable to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt - to an extent. That extent being that we should keep our eyes and minds open to the possibility of malign intent. However, that's only any good if we know what "malign intent" looks like.
My original posting - and any follow-ups of mine - may well be incorrect on specifics. I'm not perfect (yet, anyways). If it gets people to think about what actually would demonstrate "good intent" or "malign intent", then it has served its purpose, even if I'm wrong on every single method. (Now, if I did believe I was wrong on every single point, I would have written other points - I might invite "vigorous debate" at times, but I try hard not to troll or flamebait. I'm also practicing on admitting when I am wrong, but when things are this speculative, it can be hard to tell.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"Hey, MS, here's a standard that is open, but owned by a compny. Just like your OpenXML. Now bugger off, you're not implementing it.
See, that is the difference between OpenXML and OpenDocumentFormat. Now shut up".
Office on Mac makes pdfs just fine. I really believe Windows is going to disappear entirely from the desktop within the next 5 years, so Adobe's maneuver becomes moot. No one uses (and most have never heard of) XPS. Windows is broken -- has been broken -- can't be fixed -- and corporations, universities, and governments that use it are bleeding. Vista is a joke. Microsoft will retreat for a time to fixing Exchange and their other sad excuses for servers, but ultimately, they will rest their profiteering entirely on X-Box and a handful of software titles for OS X and hand held devices. Microsoft is a survivor... and they will rise from the ashes of their crappy OS disaster (I realize we're talking about Office... but not really... TFA is actually talking about Office running on Windows) and be a major player again, just not in the OS space.
The Admin and the Engineer
Those high-end presses mostly don't run the Adobe RIP; last I looked, they ran the Harlequin RIP. And that RIP will soon support XPS:
http://www.globalgraphics.com/xps/
Full disclosure: I used to work on the core RIP team on the Harlequin RIP.
Xenu loves you!
The sourceforge project, PDFCreator (http://sector7g.wurzel6.de/pdfcreator/index_en.ht m) does pretty well. No indexing and things but works better than acrobat at going from visio/metafile inline to decent PS.
.eps and adobe illustrator support from visio, which is something neither I nor my book publisher was happy about when we found it. I have to use some other thing to turn a pasted image into .eps. Pulling something from a product that is used to turn the doc into printed form is not good, not at all.
One pet peeve I have with MS is that Visio 2003 pulled export to
> Is this in any way different than when Microsoft bundled IE to hurt Netscape? If so,
> can someone explain it to me?
Sure. Are major OEMs being threatened with loss of their Windows licenses if they ship the Adobe software preinstalled? No.
You forgot one important point. We don't know very much about this story. We have to prefix everything in the media with "Microsoft said...". But I'm sure Microsoft don't have an agenda here - right? Later in the show we'll feature an independent Microsoft report called "What's wrong with Openoffice", followed by "Why Java is rubbish" and "Linux is evil".
100% market share doesn't mean monopoly.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ creates a PDF pseudo printer for WinXp. With this, you can use Word, Excel, or any other program that can print, and create PDF docs.
Organization: alphabetical, sometimes numerical or messy
"Microsoft doesn't make a PDF reader, so there's no reason for them to "extend" the PDF spec."
Yes they do, and yes there is. The reader is called "Microsoft Office". Microsoft wants you to have to buy an expensive piece of Microsoft software in order to read what is otherwise a freely available document format (PDF). That is the reason Microsoft will gladly EEE Adobe's PDF.
Adobe may be evil for what they did to Dmitry Skylarov, but they don't hold a candle to Microsoft.
Let's cut throught the hypocrisy:
/LOOKS/ like" ?
/option/ to be compliant". Well, it should not be an /option/ to be compiant, should it ? Anyway, ISO 19005 is PDF1.4 for archiving documents, so it may not fully apply. What should have been present:
From your first link:
"Unfortunately, Adobe has been pushing for us to remove XPS from Windows. Given the clear benefits of XPS to customers and partners, this is something we can not do. We are always sensitive to competitor complaints when we design Windows and we've tried to address any concerns Adobe may have. But, we have to first and foremost design our products for customers, not competitors"
What kind of "clear benefits" XPS have to Microsoft customers that PDF don't have ?
Not beeing able to sent the document to anyone wihtout Office ?
Not beeing able to print it anywhere ?
Not beeing able to read it on linux ?
There is absolutely NO benefits from XPS from a customer standpoint. XPS is slighly more advanced than PDF on some areas, but Microsoft could easily have dealt with Adobe to produce a PDF1.7 with the neccessary additions.
Now, second link:
"It looks like Adobe wanted us to charge our customers extra for the Save as PDF capability"
What kind of statement is that ? That is 100% FUD. "It
That have a very dishonest feel, to me. Like if Adobe said something like: "By bundling PDF for free in Office, you are using your (abused) monopoly to kill the PDF market and plan a 100% share by substituing XPS to PDF down the path. Nobody will be able to compete because you will have killed the market" , to which Microsoft replied "What you object to the fact that it is free?"
Third link:
"Notice that there are a number of options for how you publish your PDF. One of the key ones is to use the ISO 19005-1 standard for PDF:"
Even the wording is funny: "Looks, we give you the
PDF Format:
[X] 1.4
[X] ISO 19005 PDF/A-1a
[ ] Replace unlicensed fonts by equivalent Bitmaps
[ ] 1.5
[ ] 1.6
[ ] ISO 19005 PDF/A-2
But, no. It just looks they added the 'Make US goverment happy' checkbox.
"We actually separated the XPS support out because we wanted to make sure we weren't giving XPS an unfair advantage over PDF."
Yeah, sure. How kind of you.
Anyway, the question that is carefully avoided is perfectly worded in a post in that last link:
"Here is a question to MS:
Do you believe that your have the right to bundle a "Save as PDF" function with Office 2007 under cartel law?
If yes, don't wine but include it. Let Adobe take you to court and they will loose.
If you think you would breach cartel law by including the feature, do what you just anounced and pull it.
Arguing that this is bad for customers logically entails that you believe the current antitrust laws are bad for consumers. Is that really your position?
In any case you shouldn't confuse this with the "open format" discussion. It would indeed be a VERY strange position to say "It is legal to use a monopoly to crush a competitor, IF the issue at hand involves an open format. Whenever we deal with an open format, antitrust law doesn't apply". Is that a position you want to take?"
Anyway, we have not heard Adobe's side of this yet. So far everything has been 1 or 2 degrees of separation from either MS or MS fan sites.
That's what this very well could be about. MS could be trying to use (illegally) its desktop monopoly to crush Adobe and establish a XFS/Metro monopoly in the place of PDF. Adobe's played very well in that regard and everybody, even BSD and Linux users have benefited from PDF. Based on the last twenty years of behavior, I don't think anyone can with a straight face say they could expect the same of MS and Metro/XFS.Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
ISO 19005-1 is PDF 1.4. There's a little bit more to just needing to be a pdf 1.4 in order to be compliant to ISO 19005-1. , such as no javascript allowed in the pdf, no encryption and all fonts must be embedded
Beating up people in little rooms, if you do it for a good reason you do it for a bad one.
I've never used this PDFcreator, does it preserve links, converts headings to bookmarks and tags the pdf?
Beating up people in little rooms, if you do it for a good reason you do it for a bad one.
I would assume it's because encoding MP3 at 64kpbs doesn't require a patent license. Modplug (now OSS) had an MP3 export that did up to 64kbps; I remember something about how that was legal to distribute, but any higher quality required paying for the licenses. It could also be that it's just an acceptable place to cut quality. Who knows?
Well, the way I see it MS aren't bundling PDF software with their system - they were planning on including it with Office.
From what I read they were planning on including it with their OS. They are definitely planning on including their competitor to PDF in their OS. Both of those are direct bundling. MS Office is in violation of antitrust law in that it is illegally tied to Windows (Windows has a bundled in .doc reader but not one for all the other document formats). Thus adding a PDF generator to a program that is already illegally tied to their monopoly OS, is in itself tying. So, yes they certainly are using their monopoly to leverage both their PDF tools, MS Office, and their new PDF competitor.
I don't see how anti-trust applies in that case, as other office suites already do the same (eg OOo)...
What their competitors are doing does not matter. The OpenOffice team does not have a monopoly so they can't bundle anything with that monopoly. Even if your competitors are bundling non monopolized products together does not mean you can bundle monopolized and non-monopolized products together.
Another poster mentioned that even if Microsoft introduces XPS, they still have to convert the offset printers to the format. Still, I think Adobe should be concerned. A mere 5 years ago, printers only took QuarkXPress files. PDF succeeded on its own merits, and that took years to become the accepted format. But if XPS comes on every new Windows PC that a printer buys, then I think you'll see XPS happening a lot faster for Microsoft than it did for Adobe.
Windows has a bundled in .doc reader but not one for all the other document formats
.doc files, it can only actually create rtf files (and text, etc), so at best I think that's probably a grey area.
That's true, but (read-only) viewers for the other formats are available for free download from microsoft.com. Also while Wordpad can read (simple)
Even if your competitors are bundling non monopolized products together does not mean you can bundle monopolized and non-monopolized products together.
Well, IANAL so I can't comment on what anti-trust law says, but that's not how I would expect it to work. To me, PDF is just another document format, and I don't see why MS Office shouldn't be able to understand it especially given that OOo already understands it. That's for the lawyers to decide though, should it ever get to court.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Whatever you may think abot these very large companies, one thing maybe we can work towards is this - do we really want governments designing our products? That's where this tactis is headed. C'mon, man, can't we all get along?
Yes it does, actually.
That's true, but (read-only) viewers for the other formats are available for free download from microsoft.com.
So what? Are you not understanding the concept of "bundled?" One is there by default (which 99% of users will never remove). One is not there by default and 99% of users will never know to download it. The .doc format and the MS Office suite in general are given an advantage. Don't forget the tying via the exchange format either (of which they have already been convicted).
Well, IANAL so I can't comment on what anti-trust law says, but that's not how I would expect it to work.
I'm not a lawyer either but I can read. You aren't allowed to enter a new market by leveraging your existing monopoly. If MS does this they will be entering the portable document generation market and gaining market share not through having a better format or a better implementation of PDF (not that they don't necessarily) but through bundling and tying with their existing monopoly.
If MS feels it has a better format than PDF fine. If they feel they have a better PDF generator, fine again. Let them compete on even ground by offering both as a separate product, just like Adobe has to. If it is better the market will move towards it.
To me, PDF is just another document format, and I don't see why MS Office shouldn't be able to understand it especially given that OOo already understands it.
OpenOffice is not a monopoly. Windows is. Thus, they can't bundle it with Windows. MS Office is tied illegally to Windows, thus they probably can't bundle it there either. This is not really all that hard. Just think in terms of markets. Are they entering a new market? If so, are they benefiting from having a Windows in any way (like bundling or tying). If not, they're in the clear. If so, they are breaking the law.
If they are not stopped here is what is going to happen. Most users will never buy or download PDF generation tools from third parties and MS will own most of the PDF market in a few years. MS will also provide their own PDF competitor right along with it. Then, when they have enough of the market, MS will deprecate PDF and tell everyone to move to their new format and only read, not write PDF. Since most people don't want to change tools (and are locked in anyway) they will go along. Slowly the market shifts from the Open PDF standard, readable and writable for all programs and platforms, to a closed format owned by MS. Users will be further locked into Windows and Word. Eventually, MS will kill all support for PDF, maybe going so far as to intentionally make it hard to implement a third-party reader or intentionally breaking Adobe products (as they have been caught doing in the past). Other Word processors like OpenOffice will not be an option. Since they will no longer have any incentive, MS will completely stop adding new features and improving the format or the tools, although they may add anti-features, like DRM.
And all of this will not be due to their coming up with a better product, but because they have leveraged their existing monopoly. We've already seen it happen with Internet Explorer and HTML. Right now Firefox is much, much better, but most people don't even know it exists and IE is "good enough" that they don't look for something better. We've gone from the open standard HTML to an intentionally broken version of HTML written and read by MS tools. And when was the last time MS upgraded their support for HTML? They still partially implement 6 year old standards and are single-handedly responsible for holding back development of Web technologies and retarding progress in the name of locking people in to their proprietary platform and tools. Lets think this through and not let them do it again people.
On Linux, all the PDF printers are built on top of ghostscript: that's the core of the PDFCreator tool for printing PDF in Windows, ImageMagick as used in Linux and UNIX and CygWin, and a lot of other open source tools. Ghostscript is what Adobe wishes their commercial versions of Postscript and PDF tools would be, an easily plugged-in utility for document creation and conversion, but ghostscript adheres to the published standards better and is much more portable by avoiding "business-plan" driven feature additions.
Note that there are two versions of ghostscript: the GNU version and the AFPL version. The GNU version is GPL licensed, the AFPL is not and has more interesting licensing, but the AFPL works better for recent Postscript and PDF features. Of course, watching Microsoft break themselves trying to integrate ghostscript licensing into MS Office and throw out Adobe's weirder licensing would be an amazing vindication of open source tools: I'd pay the price of an Adobe license just to sit at ringside and watch the fight.
When a company starts to fall it's products start to come with some interesting "features".
This is an interesting observation. I think it is a little bit chicken and egg though.
You can frequently see that when management takes its eye off the ball they focus more on revenue than on product. Products become these strange tools to milk more revenue without adding value. You can often see young innovative companies make the transition in management to "profiessional" "result-oriented" management, and see their product stagnate. Then you see marketing gimicks replace product innovation. New "features" are all about vendor revenue, and not about utility or value to the end customer.
Thus, as you obseved, a company's downfall can often be linked to a time when they shifted the focus of their new features from all about innovation, to all about revenue.
Say what you will about MS, but they still do a marvelous job of selling "all about revenue" to the public as "all about innovation."
Reality disagres with your delusional mumblings. No version of Office reads PDF files.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Adobe's market share in PDF creation software is similar to Microsoft's marketshare in desktop OSes for intel-compatible CPUs.
Are you kidding? That is not even remotely true. What makes you believe this? In any case, MS is a convicted monopolist and is clearly bundling. Assuming Adobe has a monopoly on PDF generation, what exactly are they bundling it with that MS is competing against? How is Adobe locking people in to their other products, seeing as PDF is an open standard and is already implemented by dozens of other companies? You know it isn't illegal to have a monopoly, right? It is illegal to abuse one. It is clear how MS is abusing theirs, but how do you believe Adobe is abusing the monopoly you claim they have?
Adobe, wanting to protect their "quasi-monopoly", was willing to allow Microsoft Office 2007 to export PDF if Microsoft charged extra for that functionality so as to not undercut the price of Adobe's own PDF creation software.
The above is just speculation, but even if it is true, what's the problem? Adobe wanted them to provide a market force, since MS was bypassing the market.
3. Microsoft wasn't bastardizing PDF. What would be the point, since Microsoft is not producing any PDF reader? Since Microsoft isn't creating their own reader, any PDF document producted by Microsoft Office would have to be readable by other readers (and printable by printers), so why bastardize the format? Think logically.
MS can't bastardize the format since Adobe's free license and patent protection for the standard only applies to the exact standard. Instead MS's plan is to implement both PDF and XPS, until their tools take over the market (which they will if they are bundled). Then they will slowly kill PDF support, locking people into their platform and tools.
Guess what, it's perfectly readable by Acrobat Reader and any other PDF compliant reader.
Of course, MS has no real choice. They need to get the market before they break compatibility. They are on stage one, "embrace" after which them move on to "extend," or more likely in this case, "replace."
Regarding XPS, XPS is a PDF competitor based on XML.. XPS is part of Vista...
MS is bundling a competitor to existing tools with their OS, which the law has established they have a monopoly on. Has there ever been a more clear-cut case of bundling?
XPS's role in Vista is similar to PDF's role in Mac OS X. Microsoft has shared with Adobe info on XPS for several years.
How are either of these relevant? Apple has no monopoly. Adobe doesn't care about shared info, especially since their is no guarantee they can even implement it legally.
Translation: MS is trying to do the least possible to try to appear to comply with the law. And we're supposed to applaud this? MS has OEMs balls in a vice and they know it. Now they give them the choice of including a bundled item or not. Which one costs more? How much of a discount is MS giving OEMs for not including XPS support, or are they just charging them for all the development costs regardless of whether or not it is included?
Lastly, Microsoft is still going to provide PDF and XPS export support in Office 2007 as free downloadable plug-ins.
This, at least, is legal and is the only way MS can legally provide this product. All the others are breaking anti-trust law.
Lastly, please don't you (or the state of MA) ever refer to PDF as "open" in the future. If it's not open for all, then it's not truly open, period.
See, this right here shows your ignorance. Is HTML open? But MS was taken to court for bundling IE, how can HTML be open? This has nothing to do with open. Water is an open standard for drinking, but it is still illegal to bundle with a monopolized product. Get a clue.
I see that there are people on both sides of this issue. But many may not have been around long enough to remember what happened when Microsoft adopted outside formats to be used in Microsoft Office. The WordPerfect format was used only to help migrate many people from WordPerfect to Microsoft Office. This is because one could use a WordPerfect doc in Microsoft Office, but not use a Microsoft Office doc in WordPerfect really well. Yes, their were import filters. But those worked just as well as filters working to import Microsoft Office documents into Open Office today. WHy do you think Open Office wants to adopt the Open Document format? And aside from other things Microsoft did to ensure WordPerfect's demise, this was one of the methods Microsoft used to gain monopolistic dominance. Microsoft KNOWS HOW TO DESTROY a document format and a business. And it was just before the time Microsoft had an incident with Stac Electronics. Adobe welcomes Open Office because Open Office encourages the PDF format while not directly threatening it's future existance. And Adobe also welcomes the use of PDF on Apple because Apple directly licensed the technology for use in MAC OS X. But Microsoft has had a legacy of Divide and Conquer. Microsoft does not have the trust because they have not earned it over the years. They have not truely repented. They do not admit fault. They show no compassion. So that is what they have earned. They can not integrate technology openly. They do not know how. All they know how to do is buy out, aquire, or kill off technology. They do not know how to be nice and play fair. And this is where Microsoft loses. Microsoft is no longer king of the forest and they need to be for their business model to survive.
You can call me a troll. You can call me bad or a negative thinker, but the Truth is the Truth. And sometimes the truth hurts because people do not want to accept it. I have been involved with personal computers for the past 30 years way before Windows 3.0 and I know whats up. Microsoft has an established legacy and Adobe knows what kind of legacy it is. They are simply staying away from it by making this choice and it is pitiful for Microsoft that Microsoft has the character it does, a character that was established for a long period of time for the various decisions it has made in relevance to open and honest competition and the marketplace. They have abused both.
When I first read this I thought Adobe were worried that nobody would buy their overpriced software. Then I realized that it was more market share concerns. Microsoft are just including an export filter, the same way as OpenOffice, StarOffice do. It is not in Microsoft's interest to mess about with the format as users would expect Microsoft PDF to be 100% compatible with Adobe PDF, else they won't use it. I wonder if now Microsoft will pull all copies of Office 2007 Beta 2 that have the PDF function to release a new version without the pdf filter.
What Adobe's worried about is if a program that about 90% of people have can make .pdfs, then will anyone actually buy their .pdf maker?
I disagree. What Adobe is worried about is when 95% of the world has switched to using MS's PDF generator, what happens when MS deprecates PDF and tells everyone to switch the their new, proprietary, competitive format for writing files.
Of course, I think it's all bullshit. They let Apple and OOo use .pdf, so they shouldn't be able to change the rules for Microsoft.
They didn't "change the rules." The PDF license is open for all to use. MS can make PDFs just as well as anyone else, but that does not mean they are immune to other laws. You might as well complain if Adobe went to the police because MS execs had sent them a death threat in PDF format. But PDF is open, what right does Adobe have to complain? This has nothing to do with PDF licensing and everything to do with MS breaking anti-trust law. MS can make their own PDF generation software and their own competitive format generation software. What they can't do is bundle it with Windows. What they probably can't do is bundle it with MS Office, since MS office is illegally tied to Windows.
When all Adobe has done is put together a bunch of free software including GhostScript and want's to charge a bunch of money for it! Many other programs allow print to PDF so why should MS be excluded and why should they charge for it?
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is facing a great battle." - Philo of Alexandria -
No, it does. What you mean is that a monopoly doesn't necessarily mean abuse of a monopoly.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
The situation is a little different :
- Sun managed to pull the plug from MS's own implementation only after a long time. By then, the Java was already I completly bastarized standart. In everybody's mind the initial paradigm of "Write once, run everywhere" has shifted to "Write once, debug everywhere". In short, thanks to microsoft for bringing a subtlely incompatible "enhanced" Java, the whole Java platform was broken. That coupled with the fact that it'll be a long before before all the user base accross the web has a consistent full Sun-compatible Java, made the time appropriate for MS'own clone of the technology :
Couple
- Adobe is being paranoid and is trying to prevent Microsoft from doing the same thing. Just right now, PDF is a standart that works the same and inter-operates between Acrobat Reader, Acrobat, Apple's Quartz engine, PDF Creator, GhostView, OpenOffice.org, Cairo, etc...
Most organisations (at least those I know of...) are used to install either the full Acrobat, or PDF Creator along MS-Office to get PDF export capability, and get full PDF compliance this way.
If Microsoft is allowed to make their own PDF exportation tools, you'll bet that they will come up with some "improved" monsters called Microsoft Visual P++ and
Adobe is trying to avoid that now.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
OLE objects. Exactly my point.
Fewer than 1% of all documents contain an embedded object. But I'm glad to have given you a way to weasel out of having to apologize for lying.