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.'"

Comments

Adobe is screwed

[DigitlDud]

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.

Re:If only pdf would really die.

[aetherworld]

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.

Standards

[jmorris42]

> 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.;

Citation Please

[maggard]

XPS support is being built into new models from all major printer manufacturers.

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...

SVG?

[RAMMS EIN]

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.