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Acrobat-killer Submitted to Standards Body
Flying Wallenda writes "Did Adobe make a tactical blunder when it complained to the European Union about Microsoft including support for its XML Paper Specification (XPS) in Windows Vista and Office 2007? Now that Microsoft has decided to submit its 'PDF killer' to a standards-setting organization, Adobe may be regretting its decision. 'Microsoft is looking again at its license in order to make it compatible with open source licenses, which means that the "covenant not to sue" will likely be extended to cover any intellectual property dispute stemming from the simple use or incorporation of XPS. The end result is that using XPS may be considerably more attractive for developers now that the EU has apparently expressed concerns over the license.'"
Pretty soon the word 'killer' will have lost its original meaning. In fact, it will be a compliment to be called a 'killer' because it means you were a solution for a problem that already had a widely popular solution.
Yet you overcame that and somehow became the new solution until you yourself were killed. And your functionality was conveyed specifically by saying '<competing solution> killer.' They couldn't even take the time to mention what it was you did.
Slashdot uses this way too much.
Killer.
Did I hear someway say open source friendly and Microsoft in the same sentence? Could it be true?
___________________________
Free iPods? Its legit and simple. 5 of my friends got theirs. Get yours here!
I find it telling that so much of what big companies like Microsoft try to create is intended to be some kind of Killer. Rather than come up with something brand new that the market has never seen before, they wait for someone else to do just that, and then they try to Kill it and claim its glory for themselves.
XPS support is being built into new models from all major printer manufacturers. It is lot more modern than PDF/PS and does a better job supporting fancier documents with features like transparencies and gradients. And now apparently its going to be open and standardized as well. It looks like MS nailed this one.
Forcing a reboot to update a file viewer is pure quality and genius.
I hope they die real soon.
I wouldn't say that. The original Adobe reader is horrible in my opinion. But the PDF standard is quite solid and implements a lot of useful features, I think.
Especially the possibilities for inline fonts and ocr'd text using the original font are great.
Trying to coin another standard.
/* No Comment */
A dead human acrobat submitted his body?
Someone killed a human acrobat and submitted his body?
The murderer was submitted to some kind of law-enforcement?
That is late at night here, however.
What does XPS do better than PDF? Can you link to a list of features or, better yet, a feature comparison?
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I'm amazed that Brandon Flowers doesn't have Bill Gates on some sort of block-list by now.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
This is what mainstream open-source was clamoring for Microsoft to do... Now Microsoft is standardizing a wide variety of code and documents. So good. Ten years from now when a terabyte database seems kind of small but the information in it is marked up in the as standard a form as ASCII is today then processing huge amounts of information will be as easy as it gets. Once information is standardized then it opens the doors to a wide variety of companies to manipulate the information - in effect providing a "service" to the owner of the database. Open-source, closed, doesn't matter when you have standardized tubes connecting modules and information. A network-centric service economy is probably where we'll go but as Niels Bohr said "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."
Shh.
This writeup is (once you get through the -killer nonsense) suspiciously pro-Microsoft. Shouldn't it be something like "Micro$oft Tries To Patent Paper!"?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I always wonder what it really means when Microsoft makes "open standards" and such, ever since the MSO XML debacle. I'll wait to hear some details that confirm that there aren't any dirty tricks involved.
Even so, I'm not sure why I would want to jump on this new standard at the moment. PDF is widely supported, and does a good job for the things it's meant for. Will Microsoft make a program to do the things that Acrobat does? Will it provide different ways to optimize quality/size? Will it work with the companies in the print business to make sure it provides everything they need, and works on their equipment on the same level as PDF? Because as much as PDF is nice for trading print documents online, it's real strength is the support from professional printing industries.
So that's what Microsoft needs to do to be on equal footing with Adobe, which still doesn't tell us why anyone should switch.
That's the basic Microsoft business tactic.
d _extinguish
"Embrace, extend and extinguish"
as the Deptartment of Justice accused Microsoft of actually stating in internal memos. Like you say, it's alot cheaper for a company like Microsoft to steal someone else's market than to gamble in creating a new one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend_an
XPS looks to me like a marginally superior format to PDF. It's XML-based, which means easier parsing as well as readability with a regular text editor, and it strips out PDF's stupid nonsense like forms and multimedia which is best left to web pages.
That being said, I'm not sure it's worth splitting the market with a similar competing format just for these advantages.
As a matter of fact, I think English is such a killer language precisely because we are so quick to get all idiomatic.
Will this one start faster and not bug me every other time I run it to install some random new adobe crap I dont want or need? I the answer to either is yes concider me ready to convert.
All the "PDF killers" so far have been aimed at the public's perception of PDF: A screen reader that can preserve layouts and print them. But that perception is very outdated. PDF survives because it isn't just a screen reader, it is a defacto standard for CMYK exchange so that print shops can make color-separated output no matter what app generated it. It also can be interactive, with buttons and multimedia. It supports form fields. Everybody thinks Adobe is Photoshop but really, in terms of revenue, Adobe is Acrobat because Acrobat is used more widely in more ways than can be done with these "PDF killers."
Does XPS do all that? Does XPS do CMYK? Can XPS generate the equivalent of PDF/X-1a, an ISO standard for advertising specs required by Time Inc. and other big media sites?
It's right here: http://malfy.org/
stop with the -killer suffix?
I haven't seen a Ford-Mustang-killer, or a Conair-hairdryer-killer, or an Pepsi-Cola-killer, or an Boeing-Airbus-500-killer before. Why is the information industry the only industry with goddamn KILLER APPLICATIONS or <FOOBAR>-KILLERS? No fucking wonder citizens and customers think software and hardware manufacturer are even less funny than Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. </rant>
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Me flarppy disks. Arrrr!
Hey, it worked great for .NET.
Yeah I'm reading over the specification right now and the color features are pretty extensive. There's support for storing color information in many different color spaces including CMYK.
There's nothing in there for interactivity though, it's strictly a fixed document format.
It's unreasonably hard to generate quality PDF programmatically.
Either you have resort to using the virtual printer driver supplied with Acrobat, or you have to typeset your document to PostScript format using TeX or whatever.
And if you use the virtual printer driver, forget about interactive features and full-text searching.
Editing PDFs is a nightmare - PostScript allows way too much flexibility for a 'portable' format.
I don't know much about XPS, but organizing the document as a set of zipped XML files seems to be a step in the right direction.
What's so horrible about PDF exactly? It's good enough to be used in the OS X graphics system of all places.
Acrobat is horrible, but that has no more to do with PDF than Internet Explorer has to do with HTML.
> FWIW, there are plenty of fast non-crappy PDF readers. For example, xpdf and foxit.
:(
How about ONE reader that will open and print all PDF files? Just today I had to use xpdf to print a PDF that Adobe's latest version would display and TRY to print, but the printer would just sit and spin. Btw, the printer was an HP with a licensed Adobe Postscript personality. Of course sometimes Acroread will deal with documents xpdf can't. Not as often does it work that way but often enough we have to have both, and only acroread works as a browser plugin and that makes the natives less restless.
Since I really doubt anythng sponsored by MSFT will achieve better results in the the next decade, count my vote as against even if it has magic XML pixie dust.
Democrat delenda est
I hope Microsoft will submit more open standards and adhere to them. This is good news =)
> XPS support is being built into new models from all major printer manufacturers.
If so it would be a major reason to support XPS. If it is just some crap in the Windows drivers forget it. Just checked HP's site and didn't see it mentioned.
The reason it would be great to get it in printers is that it would force it to be a STANDARD, unlike PDF. MP3 is a standard in that any conforming stream will play on any conforming player. New encoders can be developed but the resulting streams must be playable on ANY player adhering to the original MP3 spec. Adobe never figured that out with PDF, requiring a continual upgrade treadmill to newer readers and adding new features in non backwards compatible ways. Even though some printers DO support a version of PDF, it isn't usable for long after purchase.
If it doesn't get embedded into printers I'd trust Microsoft even less to publish a spec and then stick with it.;
Democrat delenda est
There's nothing in there for interactivity though, it's strictly a fixed document format.
:P
That's on purpose. The PDF/X subsets of PDF are limited to features that will reliably allow blind communication between content producers, prepress, and printers.
You could always use the other colorspaces with the more interactive PDF features like javascript, but you couldn't call the result a PDF/X compliant file.
I do wonder why you want non-RGB colorspaces with interactive content, however.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Someone better tell Dick Grayson (Batman's former Robin) about this acrobat killer. It may be the one that killed his parents.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Microsoft could finally prove they are not assholes. Release it with complete specs and sample output, don't require Windows libraries, allo anybody to read and write it with any software using any license, and PDF will be dead in a few months.
It does sound better: it is output-only (which is really all we care about in PDF), it uses XML, and it supports alpha compositing like SVG does. Unfortunatly doing anything correctly means Microsoft has to admit that Open Source is not an evil cancer. Don't know if they can bear to do this, or if they are even capable of doing it.
All I could picture was... "The Hardly Boys, two young whippersnappers with a knack for solving crimes." "Tonight's episode...'The Case of the Acrobat-Killer' "
This "standard" is going to be the same "standard" as MS Office XML, CIFS, .net, Kerberos, and all the other "standards" Microsoft has ever promoted. They even managed to bastardize ASCII, and yet some gullible people still jump up and down every time Microsoft announces a new "standard".
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Once the Microsoft standard becomes widespread they'll change the license, add some patented clusterfuck or update the spec to lock competitors out. We've seen it all before and they always try and screw everyone. PDF is fine for what it is and it's widely supported, so long as Adobe keep javascript, flash and 3D seperate from the core spec I have no complaints.
Microsoft must still be reeling from the success of OpenDoc, they should hurry to get a registered MIME type and file extension they're going to use for this PDF killer. I'll look forward to filtering it.
PDF is not a de facto standard. As I mentioned in another post, there are ISO standards for PDF. The spec is fully open, you could go download it now, no agreeing to anything required (though it is something like 1100 pages, better get some coffee).
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Really?
Name them.
Seriously, I've been looking. I can't find a reference from any printer maker regarding a model with XPS driver support built in.
You'd think someone other then Microsoft would be at least mentioning this, unless it were just MS blowing hot air, which we know Waggener Edstrom (MS's PR agency) would never do...
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I first heard about PDF in 1995, but it wasn't until around 2000 that software existed to actually do stuff with it.
I still don't do anything in PDF that can't be done in postscript - in fact I still just produce the postscript and only convert to PDF because not many people have heard of postscript.
FoxIt Reader is a great interim solution until this gets standardized. It reads PDF files and opens much faster than Acrobat. I'm not sure why Acrobat reader is so slow, but even the fastest available hardware seems to choke on it.
I see a lot of posts in this discussion that say XPS is better than PDF, because it's XML and human readable and you can manipulate it with XSLT, it's going to be submitted as a standard, etc. That just makes me think: what about SVG? It's already a standard, it's XML, human readable, XSLT, etc.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
for filing a false report.
---southpaw
Is too
I know it is fashionable among the Slashdot crowd to discount Acrobat as bloatware. Working as a healthcare professional, however, I really appreciate many of the features geeks may discount as bloat:
:) it has revolutionized the way I archive things. I do not keep copies of print journals anymore. Acrobat runs all the time on my machine.
Virtually all medical papers are available as PDFs. After downloading these, I can annotate them in Acrobat with comments; Acrobat allows me to highlight important passages. I know geeks do not like DRM, but Acrobat's DRM is why some biomedical e-books are available. Thanks to Acrobat, I carry a little library on my 12" Powerbook complete with my own comments/annotations.
While it is true that Acrobat lacks a command-line interface and crashes occasionally
The Adobe reader plugins for browsers are as horrible as Real Player. But I've not had too many problems from the stand alone Adobe reader, just a handful of GUI annoyances. What problems have you encountered?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
DjVu has been THE "PDF killer" for many years and has become increasingly open over the last few. Why none of the major OSS players have ever put their weight behind this technology is beyond comprehension. It is better then PDF in every way (and JPG to boot)!
I fear this says something about OSS --why in the long run it will be maginalized by monolopy's like Microsoft.
:T:R:A:N:S:
And yet, they fail to fix the main problem with PDF: Filesize, as ive seen with my own tests for the same documents from Office 2007 Beta.
1st - its just not nice to use - don't know why - personal However more specifically *I hate how its always trying to make me upgrade *Trys to get as many hooks into your system as it can (they try not to cross the line But I've noticed them exceeding their right over the years) *Reader has had some nasty crashes/freezes that have hurt my whole system - its doesn't have to do this *They try and make you pay to produce documents in their format - sure they are a business - If their Document Creator is good enough sure you can pay for it, but in a free market they shouldn't own the format and everyone should have the same rights - It seems fair if its good for word vs open document format then its good for pdf Anyway I'm fear I might be getting to logical by raising points - I just want to reiterate my feelings just come form emotional hate for adobe.
I should add - I stopped using Adobe reader anyway because I use Apple's Preview which has 99% of the features without the crap - for MacOS X of course.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I have noting against the PDF standard - but when I view PDF files on my Mac, I set up Preview as the default application because, frankly, Preview can open a PDF file an order of magnitude faster. As a simple file-viewer, Acrobat makes PDF's the 2nd to last choice for convenience (with MS Word being the last choice, of course).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
You're right. I don't think microsoft is going to be able to compete with adobe in the graphic designer or printer market. They have a credibility level of about zero with designers.
This means the .pdf users will split into two camps: designers and office workers, one using .pdf and the other .xps. The latter will be the vast majority, and this is all that Microsoft cares about. This 'killer' will work, because Microsoft has the monopoly advantage on all the day-to-day office products that are currently used to create .pdfs.
Locking up while trying to download a really huge file. Being slow as hell to start.
I don't get you people. For a group that proclaims their hate for Microsoft as often as they do, slashdotters swear that Microsoft can kill any application and any company. I'm sorry, but even Microsoft has their limitations.
Microsoft is no match for Adobe Acrobat. I guess you can consider Adobe the iPod equivalent of computer software companies. The measuring stick that all image editors are judged buy isn't Microsoft Paint - it's Adobe Photoshop. As far as document formants are concerned, Acrobat is no different. Adobe Acrobat is the one format that anyone even remotely computer literate is familiar with. My sister who has an office job knows what it is. My 15 year old cousin in high school knows what it is. My 51 year old mother even knows what it is. My barely computer literate brother is even familiar with Adobe Acrobat. Like the iPod, Acrobat is bigger than just a file format - it's the name that we all know and love, and it's one of a few cross platform applications that actually make quality, up-to-date Linux versions. Ask any long time Mac user, and they'll quickly tell you that Adobe was vital to keeping their platform afloat (Photoshop, Go Live).
As a matter of fact, we've seen this all before. Apple released a transportation method that was clearly better than it's competitor (USB), and submitted it to a standards committee. But despite all the advantages of Firewire, people had too many legacy applications and were too familiar with USB to abandon one of the few computer elements they were comfortable with. If you add legacy support to my previous reasons, The Microsoft threat isn't as strong as you would like to tell yourself it is.
Does XPS do all that? Does XPS do CMYK? Can XPS generate the equivalent of PDF/X-1a, an ISO standard for advertising specs required by Time Inc. and other big media sites?
Ok, by now everyone reading this has surely looked up XPS and can see that it has not only several features that PDF technology doesn't, but it leapfrogs the PDF/Postscript technology in many areas, even including not static publishing concepts that will be a part of the upcoming generation with Electronic Inks.
XPS also is going to hurt Adobe hard in the printer and publishing industry. There are already a number of consumer printers with XPS technology coming to the market and there are also many digital presses that will offer XPS instead of PDF, because it is free to do so instead of paying the Adobe tax.
So for large publishers there is already a bit of a buzz about it, as it may reduce the digital press costs without the Adobe licensing and they are also looking at some of the new features of XPS that will speed up production and produce better quality output easier. (Less need for rasterization and conversion from the original artwork, better font support, etc.)
One of the biggest problems in the digital prining industry now is making sure the content they are producing 'outputs' properly in PDF/Poscript. And this is a BIG issue.
For example I can create Brochure now in AI or CorelDraw that will output with clipping problems when it goes to PDF format because PDF just doesn't handle all the features that full scale vector/layer illustration software offers.
Now when trying to get this to a digital PDF/Postscript based press, this is a MAJOR issue, and the artwork has to be complexity reduced, have the clipping fixed, and often most of the Brochure ends up being rasterized at the press's resolution because the Vector and Font support in a PDF fails miserably.
These types of problems have been big issues in the publising/printing community for a long time, and Postscript v3/PDF was supposed to help, but instead things have often gotten worse. So why even have PDF based press when we (as publishers) end up rasterizing the entire brochure and artwork and are basically sending a PDF Bitmap to the device so it prints as designed?
Here is where XPS steps in and takes control of the ball, it has the preservation because of the extra features in the specification, so there is less fighting with fonts and less rasterization.
There is also the factor that no special software is needed, as Vista does all the XPS work inherently, which opens the door up for more flexibility in design software used as well. (Yes OSX does Postscript/PDF, and even WindowsXP does Postscript printer output, but there is a world of difference in the way Vista handles the from screen to document to output device because of the XAML and XPS technologies.)
XPS is being seen as a welcome fix to many Adobe PDF/Postscript issues in the printing industry.
To fully understand how XPS/XAML technologies work and also to see what they offer than PDF doesn't, you just need to go read the XPS specifications, also do a search on the printer and press manufacturers that are planning on XPS devices and why they see XPS has a good technology.
It seems to me like XPF will sting Apple in the butt, too, if it becomes dominant. Isn't there a thick powerful layer of 'display postscript' built into the newer versions of NextStep that have been rebranded MacOS X? If PDF and Postscript become also-rans, doesn't that run Apple's technology out onto a dead-end branch?
(I don't think it will happen, myself. Postscript is too strong and with too rich a heritage. But Microsoft can be a brutal and blunt opponent of good things it doesn't own.)
Please, in the future, before posting an explanation kindly know what in the hell you're babbling on about.
PostScript and PCL are most certainly used for nearly the same purposes: A Page Description Language, aka PDL. Indeed PCL was explicitly created by HP as a simpler, faster and unlicensed alternative to PostScript.
Postscript & PDF are related in that PDF is based on Postscript (a well written brief history of PDF). PDF simply builds upon PS to include meta information, JavaScript, hyperlinking (internally & externally), forms & tag structures, extended colorspaces, etc. And yes, many Postscript level 3 printers can directly print PDF. (That you're unfamiliar with this feature is likely due to your apparent near complete ignorance of high end or prepress printing.)
Oh, and most self-respecting printers don't support PCL, just those from HP or licensing PCL or it's clones (yes, the PostScript workalike has its own clone market!) Further confusing things HP now uses a PostScript clone called Phoenix in their laser printers so they can offer ps support without paying Adobe licensing fees.
Of course, PostScript & PDF are now publicly documented and it is possible to recreate them, with Ghostscript being the best known example (Phoenix is probably the most widely distributed)
Lastly, XPS is just a document format as is ODF, PDF,, NO. Nothing about that is right, indeed it pretty much completes every statement in your posting being flat out wrong or wildly inaccurate.
Go away and don't post again until you have something at least marginally correct or interesting to "News for Nerds". You're drooling in public and it is ugly, annoying, and counter-productive.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
MacOS X used Display PDF from what I remember.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
This sound like BluRay and HD-DVD, in the sense that the improvements are marginal and you have to wonder whether it is really necessary. PDF has published spec, so its not as if its undocumented. Why does Microsoft always need to spend their time one uping the competition instead of providing something really useful? The only reason I can image is that Adobe is wanting to charge MS licensing fees, that they would rather not pay.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
In case anybody missed it:
In short, it was indeed nothing but Microsoft propaganda being parroted, and I'll believe it when Cairo ships...
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Not to mention that PDF has reader implementations on many platforms. How long before this is true for XPS. I find it difficult to imagine that Microsoft will actually put any effort into making their XPS reader and and content creation tools to any other platform that Windows. So like WMA and WMV, its portable as long as you are using Windows, for everything else trawl the internet until you find some open source developers who have the time to port it elsewhere. I am being cynical, but this is Microsoft we are talking about. Apple would be just as bad, but at least they have decided to use document formats defined elsewhere.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Microsoft finally did something right. Unlike how some wish to believe, Microsft does set desktop standards because most computers mainly use Microsoft software. That was really hard to say too, but it's the truth. XPS will eventually knock out PDF because most people use MS Word to type with and Microsoft could easily push XPS from there and make it the standard. It will work better than pushing postscript will because it's from Microsoft. Also, it's open-source and XML based so it will probably be adapted even by us hackers as a standard because the licensing is not evil, even though it came from Microsoft. Summary: Microsoft finally did something right.
What's interesting is that XPS will be more open for use than PDF once it's approved as an international standard, because MS also has a "Covenant not to sue", something that Adobe doesn't have for PDF. Adobe reserves the right to sue users of PDF, and threatened to do just that against MS's use of PDF in Office 2007.
6 /02/XPSAdobe.aspx
XPS is better than PDF (has all of PDF's functionality and adds support for some graphical effects that PDF lacks), and is easier to deal with since it's XML. It also produces smaller files. (Note that these advantages aren't because MS is "smarter" than Adobe, it's just that XPS is newer, so it does more things with newer techniques). So, if XPS becomes a standard, and has technical advantages, and has a real "covenant not to sue", why would anyone use PDF besides the inertia of the format itself?
MS was going to strip Office 2007 of XPS support, requiring a separate free downloadable plugin for such support, and they were going to do the same for PDF (both were in response to Adobe's threats). MS was also going to strip Vista of full XPS support, leaving in only that required by the core printer spool, and allowing the OEMs to bundle the full XPS support on their own accord (again, this was in response to Adobe's threats).
See:
http://blogs.msdn.com/andy_simonds/archive/2006/0
But now that XPS will be a recognized standard, MS should feel free to include XPS in both Officw 2007 and Vista, and Adobe can't really do anything about it.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Of course Apple's Quartz rendering layer being based on PDF makes this unsurprising...
No argument that Acrobat, or even Acrobat Reader, is a big pig, but it is a cross-platform application trying to reproduce internally what the MacOS X rendering layer does natively, along with a gazillion other Acrobat features that you're probably not aware are missing (encryption, signing, forms, JavaScript, etc.)
The history is that Steve Jobs wanted a unified display & printing environment when he started NeXT.
This had been a huge problem on Apple's MacOS 7 due to the differing, (& only somewhat compatible) technologies used for display & printing on MacOS. So after Jobs left Apple he hired Adobe to create "Display Postscript" for NeXT. They did, and it was used both on the NeXT GUI and also as an OS-based rasterizer for the companion NeXT printers.
Adobe licensed it also to Sun for NeWS, then took what they learned from developing Display Postcript and used it to great advantage when creating PostScript Level 2, and then somewhat when developing PDF.
Along the way NeXT was bought by Apple (for -400 million) and retooled it into MacOS X, whereupon it was decided the cost of relicensing Display Postscript from Adobe was too great. Instead Apple went with the publicly documented Postscript-based successor PDF as their basis, building their own compatible variant (subset in some parts, superset in others.)
So Preview opening a PDF file it is no great feat, indeed it is one of the simplest operations it can do as PDF is what everything gets turned into anyhow.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
So why is it every single time Microsoft presents something it's going to "kill" the thing it's emulating?
is MS is just a corporate emulation of a malignant tumor? it seemingly will not ever cohabitate, or cooperate, it will only attempt to kill
how pathetic is that?
look out adobe, ms is gonna kill you yet again. yawwwnnnnnnn
Microsoft made InDesign?
Sorry, but Adobe, Quark, and a couple other companies are the big players when it comes to publishing, and Microsoft doesn't come close to offering anything helpful in that department.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
It's about time a document format stayed "fixed." Give me a format with good payload per kilobyte, precise platform-independent presentation control and NO interactivity whatsoever, and I might just become a fanboy.
In fact, as anti-MS as my sentiments are wont to be these days, I'm growing kind of fond of the MDI format. I don't like much else that they're doing, but I might just have to tip my hat to the XPS effort if it remains a static document.
Pi Ran Out
That is totally untrue. The entire MEDLINE database, nearly all of Science Web (isiknowledge.com) is PDF. There have been millions of hours spent creating and indexing much our science today in PDF files. There ain't gonna be a quick changeover. Most scientists are inherently conservative about things like this, because not unreasonably, they assume that any new standard is going to screw their previous databases. A large proportion of the publications in this country relies on federal grant money, and both the grants and all that has been published as results are in PDF.
PDF, after over a decade in existence has gained a standard foothold in a wide variety of fields, anybody who believes that there's gonna be a second change in less than that time needs to make a reality check.
Not to harp on this too much, but clients of mine have used the official PDF creators in the past, and have had no end of trouble with them. They install funny, they upgrade incorrectly. The inline browser sometimes views correctly and sometimes does not. They always, always take up a ton of room. They slime all over everywhere in your system, like Real player.
We can make a better standard. If that standard winds up coming from Microsoft, then so be it. Adobe had their chance, and they've been doing a second rate job of it for years.
The ______ Agenda
I think he means that it's not a de-facto standard, because it's a real ISO standard. That's about as standard standard as they come. There's nothing defacto about it.
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
it may be an ISO standard, but realy that means bugger all. yes you can download it and implement it but if adobe thinks you may be too much of a competitor expect to be sued. adobe have patents all over the pdf standard and unlike MS they have shown a willingness to use those to enforce there will.
They can't be considered "open" in my opinion if they get to pick and choose who is allowed to implement it. They gave up any hope of being considered open when they said MS is not allowed to support the standard in office.
What's so horrible about PDF exactly?
Its closed source. If there were an open source alternative that had as much market share as PDF that would be one thing. But PDF has nearly (if not completely) 100% market share for documents that are used in the manner PDFs are.
That depends... It certainly is an ISO standard but that doesn't make its use standard in certain areas.
In the scientific community it's a de-facto standard. There are no rules to say you must use PDF (to my knowledge), it's just a convenient and useful standard to use so everyone uses it.
That said, the poster who originally said "de-facto" was completely wrong
PDF is not a standard. PDF/X and a couple other things based on PDF are ISO standards. This is not the same thing at all. PDF might as well stand for "proprietary document format".
Yes, Acrobat (PDF) is page description what WordPerfect is to word processing, Lotus 1-2-3 is to spreadsheets, dBase is to databases, Borland is to compilers, Novell is to local networks, and Netscape is to web-browsers. Nothing Microsoft can do will ever threaten the dominating position of these products and companies.
What exactly does XPS offer that PDF doesn't?
Is this just a case of microsoft not wanting to use something they have no control over?
PDF is not ideal, because it is still controlled by a single company, and they get to dictate future versions of the format... But XPS appears to be exactly the same, what we really need is an openly maintained format where multiple interested parties can decide on the features present in future versions.
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Apple made a big deal out of "Display PDF" in Mac OS X. However, Display PDF's really just:
My city: Barcelona.
If it's open source why was Microsoft worried about legal action from Adobe for including the ability to create PDFs in their office program? If it's open source, surely that allows them to write to it? Or is Microsoft barred from including the ability to create any open source file type in their Office program?
Thing is, you're probably trolling. The disinformation has been spread quite a bit in this article, and refuted every time.
Someone else was complaining that PDF was too complex. Others are saying it's too hard to parse.
Yet why is the name of gods' green earth would you need a UI control on a page for?
Are we going to have UI viruses sent in documents now?
Dunno that it's as useful for the print industry (I've heard pretty nasty things about its actual quality when used for print work), but for everyone else it's actually a pretty nice feature. Being able to export from any program into a full quality format that can be read anywhere without much hassle at all has saved me grades and headaches many times.
Naw...we aren't even a bit more than most into portraing every issue to be "indoctrinated into us as seeing most situations to be about competition, battles, market (and/or military) wars, needing to "kill" the competition.
Pure coincidence....
We are trained to see and resolve issues through battle metaphors coming from some essentialist view that all issues can be seen as a series of unending, power-over dynamics, battle simulations and victories over a crushed opponent).
These are the training tools to bring out our second nature, as our "innate" response in dealing with "differences" that arise. The most ruthless, cunning and brutal, survive, to pass these traits on to next generation.
Guess we need to keep uping the intensity -- face it, GI'Joes and football are a bit passé and, besides, they never seemed to really catch on that well with women. On the other hand, "Pro" TV wrestling seems to stimulate women more toward fighting... Maybe there's hope there...:-/
-lpq
Really? You have a strange definition of "proprietary". The specs are available here and have been since PDF was first introduced.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Hate to burst your bubble but publishing the specs does not make it a standard. neither does it make it any less proprietry.
I agree thta multimedia is a pointless application. But being able to fill out PDF forms is actually very useful for more formal communication such as with a chamber of commerce. Those forms need to have a consistent layout, so either you have to fill them out on or paper or they make the PDF fillable and you only have to sign it.
I know what I prefer...
You can download the specification
So I downloaded the specification and the very first line after the LOC and copyright information said: "NOTICE: All information contained herein is the property of Adobe Systems Incorporated."
So how do _you_ spell proprietary???
Beating up people in little rooms, if you do it for a good reason you do it for a bad one.
You don't have to pay Adobe anything to implement a PS or PDF interpreter in your printer or whatever. The standards are open and published. Ghostscript, JAWS, etc do this.
That's the plugin, not the standalone. Adobe can't write plugins to save their lives. Just remove the plugin and configure your browser to kick up the app externally. It'll improve your quality of life no end...
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
it may be an ISO standard, but realy that means bugger all. yes you can download it and implement it but if adobe thinks you may be too much of a competitor expect to be sued. adobe have patents all over the pdf standard and unlike MS they have shown a willingness to use those to enforce there will.
Bullshit. Show me one instance of Adobe suing over use of PDF that has anything to do with the licensing or patents. You can't burn HTML files to a CD, break it in half, and then stab people to death with it either, but that does not make HTML any less of an open standard.
They can't be considered "open" in my opinion if they get to pick and choose who is allowed to implement it. They gave up any hope of being considered open when they said MS is not allowed to support the standard in office.
Are you being paid to spread this FUD? They complained to the courts when MS violated criminal antitrust laws in their implementation of both PDF and XPS. This has absolutely nothing to do with the licensing or standardization of either format. It has to do with them breaking the law in a way that happens to be using PDF. If they built a photoshop competitor into Windows Adobe would complain to the courts as well, for the same reason. It has nothing to do with whether or not PDF is standard.
Konica-Minolta is absolutely the worst manufacturer of printer drivers. They are full of bugs.
Xerox does pretty good quality but their market share is not big.
Where are the big players? HP and Canon?
PDF/X and such is a subset of the full PDF specification. PDF/X or /A or whatever files aren't "based on PDF" they are PDFs, you can open them normally in any old PDF reader.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
How exactly could PDF be more of an open standard? It is published, licensed for free including trademark and patent protection with no fees and no requirements and several versions of it are ISO certified standards? There are open and closed source implementations for years, including those from direct competitors and there has not been one legal issue with the licensing ever, so far as I know. What more could you possibly want?
If it's open source why was Microsoft worried about legal action from Adobe for including the ability to create PDFs in their office program?
Because they're a monopolist and bundling anything in your programs when you're a monopolist is of questionable legality.
If it's open source, surely that allows them to write to it?
MS and anyone else can use the PDF license to read and write PDFs all they want. MS can create a PDF creation suite that does the exact same thing as Adobe's and there is no way Adobe can use the license to stop them. That does not mean anything MS does with the PDF format is legal if it breaks other laws. For example, if MS built a tool that used the PDF format to smuggle top secret pentagon files to the Chinese, they can still be found guilty of espionage. Likewise, if they use the PDF format in a tool that competes in one market and bundle that tool with a product that they have monopolized the market for, they can still be convicted of antitrust violation. You'll note, Adobe threatened to get the law involved if MS bundled PDF and/or XPS creation tools in Windows Vista, not MS Office.
Or is Microsoft barred from including the ability to create any open source file type in their Office program?
MS is barred from bundling or tying together the sale of a product on which they have a monopoly and a product in another, existing market. Whether or not Office constitutes a monopoly is an open question, but MS's actions seem to indicate they think it is. Adobe threatened to and will try to get the justice department to convict MS of antitrust violations for including XPS creation tools in Vista as it is blatantly illegal. If MS were to bundle PDF creation tools in Vista, they'd try to get them convicted for that too. All of this has nothign to do with the licensing for PDF or whether or not it is an open standard.
huh? no. I don't see where you misunderstood me, but that's precisely the point I was making.
It's not supported by Microsoft, which unfortunately matters in the minds of a few insane fanboys.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
MS and anyone else can use the PDF license to read and write PDFs all they want.
And I wonder what sort of limitations that license has.
So how come Illustrators native format is PDF, if PDF doesn't handle all the features of AI? How is it I can save a PDF with AI layers intact, if PDF doesn't handle all the features of AI? How can I save this PDF from Illustrator, open it in Acrobat, save it again and reopen it in Illustrator with all editing capabilities still intact, if PDF doesn't handle all the features of AI?
You are kidding right? Please don't make someone take the time to explain this to you...
Create a multi-point gradient fill, see how PDFs handle that...
As for the printer comment, why in hell are you even talking about Quark? I never mentioned Quark. I was talking about taking PDF output from an illustration program and sending it to a Adobe PDF/Postscript press. Do you think everything has to GO THROUGH a page layout program like Quark, and if so, how did you get your job?
And I wonder what sort of limitations that license has.
The limitation is if you want the rights to use it and protection from patents and trademark you have to follow the standard and you have to call it "PDF." And that is all. You don't even have to sign anything because, like the GPL, it is only granting rights not taking any away thus if you don't agree to it, you only have fewer rights with regard to the copyright, patent, and trademark involved.
Really, this license has been used by GPL applications like xPDF, programs that take money away from Adobe, like LaTeXtoPDF, and commercial programs, like MacOS X. I don't understand how anyone can still be questioning this, like so many people here seem to be. Are there really that many people paid to spread misinformation by MS here, or is it just that a lot of Slashdotters are willing to repeat whatever nonsense is fed to them without even looking at the facts?
GPL software is property of the author. Does that mean that GPL software is proprietary?
Just fine. To prevent flattening save as PDF 1.4, but Illustrator also flattens this just fine. btw I'm using Illustrator CS2. What problems are you getting?
Re the Quark comment, you are quite right, not everything should go through a page layout program, however lot of printers do use Quark to imposition their pdf files for example, this process can mangle PDF files quite badly, sometimes resulting in the issues you were describing in your previous post.
Beating up people in little rooms, if you do it for a good reason you do it for a bad one.
Just fine. To prevent flattening save as PDF 1.4, but Illustrator also flattens this just fine. btw I'm using Illustrator CS2. What problems are you getting?
I appreciate you trying to help, but I was making a point. I can raise the complexity of any drawing to the point the artwork ends up being rasterized because of PDF limitations. There are way to many examples to list them all. From node complexity to too many layers...
The odds of complex artwork making it successfully to a press/printer in native PDF/Postscript is rare in today's complex world of graphics. Graphics anymore tend to go several steps beyond simple fills and the foundations of what PDFs and Postscript were designed to do.
Another flawed thought is people run out to buy Macs because they use a form of Display PDF because publishers think you get a better round trip experience. However the OSX implementation is also very lacking in support, including simple things like round-tripping embedded founts.
Take Care.
Are you still talking about Illustrator or a different illustration program? Everything Illustrator can do will be saved in PDF format, which is Illustrators native file format after all. Using Illustrator and Indesign I never have to raterize/flatten artwork when exporting to pdf.
It is indeed quite rare that a Printer can RIP a transparent 1.4 and up PDF without the need to flatten/ rasterize the pdf, aferall such RIPS are quite an investemnt for most Printers. However prefight tools, and tools such as Pitstop and of course the PDF/x standard go a long way to overcome any potential issue before actually going to the RIP. Also Adobe's new PDF print engine to be used in pre-press tools from the likes of Heidelberg and Agfa, will eliminate the need entirely for PDF files to be flattened/raterized.
Basically PDF based workflows have an fairly big headstart on XPS and I don't see XPS suddenly taking over from PDF based pre-press workflows.
regarding OS X PDF creation, OSx is perfectly capable of producing PDF/x compliant files as well(which needs all fonts to be embedded, not quite sure what you mean with your 'round-tripping fonts' comment tough), it's a bit hidden in previous versions of OS X but right there in 10.4. Advancedd and professional users will need the more control offered by the creative Suite software still. However I don't think most users buy a mac because of it's PDF capabilities though.
Beating up people in little rooms, if you do it for a good reason you do it for a bad one.
Are you still talking about Illustrator or a different illustration program? Everything Illustrator can do will be saved in PDF format, which is Illustrators native file format after all. Using Illustrator and Indesign I never have to raterize/flatten artwork when exporting to pdf.
You are truly confused on the Adobe Illustrator file format and PDF... They are somewhat the same, but NOT...
There are MANY variations of both Postscript and PDF, and when you are dealing with more advanced forms or ones that break the standards of basic formats you have problems.
AI produces far more complex artwork than PDF or Postscript can inherently handle for 99.9% of the specifications in use.
These means YES even with Illustrator I can create artwork that ends up rasterizing, having Font issues or many other problems that can pop up when using digital PDF/Postscript printers and presses.
The Vector specifications in PDF and Postscript (even the most advanced) are limited in comparision to XPS. This is a major issue, especially for people that are looking at these two solutions side by side now. With XPS I won't have to worry my output is not preserved nor do I have to worry that it will fail to print exactly as it was produced. The same cannot be said of Adboe PDF/Postscript.
I am not saying Adobe is out of the game here, but they had better hurry to catch up to offering 'file compatible' specification support for more advanced Vector technology than they currently can with Postscript or PDF.