MS Four Points of Interoperability and Adobe 274
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."
Managing the Market (Score:3, Insightful)
the next standard from MS (Score:3, Funny)
Serves them right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Serves them right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Serves them right
The decision to support PDF was long delayed and we all knew it was because MS doesn't want to give PDF an edge in their own products, thus contributing further to the spread use of the format.
This is why the decision to support PDF in 2007 was a surprise. But now that Adobe is acting like a spoiled brat, Microsoft will remove the PDF support.
It's really amusing Adobe doesn't want Microsoft to support PDF, given Microsoft has prepared a quite capable PDF competitor itself called XML Paper Specification (XPS), with superior features to those found in PDF (since it's newer, I'm not saying PDF can't catch up of course)...
Why the heck is this so familiar to me? Ah yea, I remember. Sun sued Microsoft for their Java support in Windows/IE. Microsoft removed (again) the support and we know where Java is today in terms of client-side browser applets.
At the same time Microsoft has managed to spread wide their version of Java:
Expect the same to happen with XPS.
Re:Serves them right. (Score:5, Interesting)
If XPS is going to be worth anything, it needs to operate on more than just vista. Otherwise it's useless to those presses.
So what's worth more several billion dollars for the printing industry who have for years used PDF to it's fullest or forcing that entire industry to change to something that isn't available to anyone other than MSFT. (hint the printing industry utilizes lot's of macs as well as windows machines)
Re:Serves them right. (Score:3, Interesting)
You're absolutely correct. But industrial manifacturers, like big presses are not what marketers call "early adopters" at all.
XPS is far superior in their support alpha blends, composite modes, primitives, bitmap transforms and so on compared to PDF-s. Lots of printer manifacturers have working models of their printers with full XPS support.
XPS is the designer's dream. Even if he'll hav
Re:Serves them right. (Score:2)
Platform non-neutrality is shooting yourself in the foot in the printing business.
Re:Serves them right. (Score:3, Insightful)
Which of the two assertions do you support? You're contradicting yourself.
No, he isn't -- a platform-neutral format would support any platform (Macs, Windows, Linux, mainframes, whatever) equally well. That was his point. He was just using the popularity of Macs as an example of why a Win
Re:Serves them right. (Score:4, Insightful)
MS may have a competitor to PDF, but they have nothing that competes with Photoshop or Illustrator. Even if they did, I think the tight integration of PDF into the CS2 workflow would keep most designers exactly where they are, and, consequently, keep printers right where they are as well. XPS is only as pretty as it is widely used, which is to say, not very. Adobe can catch up, and most likely will.
The question that arises, though, is when is MS going to buy Quark? They're already working on some code to compete with Adobe on the creative end, but I've always wondered why they don't just go after InDesign's biggest competitor.
Re:Serves them right. (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking as someone who has done several mass quantity print jobs, I would much prefer a stable format which is uniform across platforms, than a couple extra design tweaks. I don't want to go through hell to get my work printed. I just want to take a cd to the printshop, and get 50,000 copies. I really like the
Most PDFs aren't for pre-press (Score:2)
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 lo
ScriptWorks supports XPS now (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.globalgraphics.com/xps/ [globalgraphics.com]
Full disclosure: I used to work on the core RIP team on the Harlequin RIP.
Re:Serves them right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Au contraire.
Adobe is facing the same thing that Sun was facing with Java. Microsoft's strategy is to take a standard, be it an open standard or a commercial de-facto standard and change it in some way to make it ever so slightly incompatible. The people who use Microsoft's "new standard" find out that interoperating with real standards-following software is unreliable and that the only way to get "interoperability" is to buy more Microsoft licenses.
I believe it's called "embrace, extend, and extinguish"
Since Microsoft has a track record of doing this, Adobe's paranoia is entirely justified.
"Sun sued Microsoft for their Java support in Windows/IE."
Because Microsoft was throwing dead goats in the Java compatibility well. DuH.
"Java is today in terms of client-side browser applets"
Yeah, everywhere. It's called AJAX.
Bad troll, no cookie.
--
BMO
Re:Serves them right. (Score:2)
Me thinks someone doesn't know yet Javascript != Java.
Re:Serves them right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhm...you do realize that the J in AJAX stands for *Javascript* right? And that Javascript has *nothing* to do with Java (other than the name and a few similarities of syntax), right?
I agreed with the rest of your post, but calling AJAX Java is clearly wrong.
Btw, I suspect that the main reason why Microsoft was going to support PDF was to ease the transition from XPS. Microsoft would be able to talk to printers that understood *either* XPS or PDF. That would allow people to do their work in XPS, show it to others in small quantities in XPS, and then mass produce in PDF. If the mass produced PDF was inferior to the XPS samples, then that gives Microsoft leverage with the printers to switch to something XPS compatible.
Now, Microsoft will have to spend a lot more money up front to get XPS support into hardware. In the beginning, Microsoft will offer brilliant tools and technical assistance to printer manufacturers who wanted to offer XPS support. In five to ten years, they will charge money to not display warnings that the device is not XPS certified.
The real question is what's stopping them from doing that? It's only money. They have plenty. This is probably the correct decision for Adobe. However, Microsoft is still fully capable of moving into the market. It's just going to be a bit harder now.
Re:Serves them right. (Score:2)
"Sun sued Microsoft for their Java support in Windows/IE."
Because Microsoft was throwing dead goats in the Java compatibility well. DuH.
You've probably missed the part where I said they need also a reader software to be able to embrace and extend PDF.
If they produce a garbage and call it PDF, I don't the Adobe Reader will just render it nevertheless.
When you talk about Java and HTML and so on, you shouldn't forget that
a surprise or a pitfall (Score:2)
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 A
Re:a surprise or a pitfall (Score:2)
Re:Serves them right. (Score:2)
I think it's silly too, but it's not them that started this silly trend, and they do it in attempt to gain credibility and support for their new formats.
XML = PR.
Re:Serves them right. (Score:3, Insightful)
For text-based formats, there's certain reasons not to use XML, but if the goal is any form of interoperatbility, ya might as well use it.
Just a few minor problems. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Serves them right. (Score:3, Interesting)
2) A day or two ago many were listing a substantially different version of this same story. That time it was nailed to a press release where MS was speculating to itself in public.
3) Is there any evidence that Adobe is even involved in this? I hate to think of them as "good guys" in even a relative sense, but I suspect that they may have had no input into this at all. That this is purely MS managing the news so that when they don't include "save to pdf" they've got a
Cute PDF (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe Adobe just got smart. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Maybe Adobe just got smart. (Score:2)
That's my guess. It's not like MS doesn't have a history of it. OpenGL, CSS, HTML, OpenDocument, Java. Implementing or joining a committee that decides on the future of a spec, implementing the first version to the spec, then bastardizing it via embrace and extend (extend here also meaning making a version that has some serious issues such as speed or expandability like OpenGL).
Ad
Re:Maybe Adobe just got smart. (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't believe it? Try HTML.
Re:Maybe Adobe just got smart. (Score:2)
In all fairness, Office 2007 cannot read PDFs. It's more of a "hmm, let's not export Word tables to PDF and say it's a limitation of PDF!" kind of future worrisome thing.
Re:Maybe Adobe just got smart. (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually it's far fetched. Microsoft just added an exporter, not a reader. The only popular and common way to see and print a PDF yet is the Adobe Reader (and some other Adobe products).
Thus, either is Microsoft producing PDF-s that open and print in Reader, or their PDF support will just be useless.
Bend it and twist it, but there's no sign that Microsoft wanted to bastardize the PDF format.
What I actually believe they wanted, is to put PDF support in, and then become really agressive with their "own" PDF: the XPS.
In that case, their support for PDF will be a really strong point when Adobe eventually files an Antithrust case against Microsoft for trying to push PDF out of the market by implementing XPS in their Windows OS. Microsoft will say "but we also support PDF in Office".
Of course now that it's not part of Office, Microsoft can still claim all of best of intentions, so they still hold that card, and Adobe just lost what could've been a good thing for the PDF adoption and acceptance as a standard.
Re:Maybe Adobe just got smart. (Score:2)
Ahh, but not if you have studied your Agrippa...
Re:Maybe Adobe just got smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
What I'd be afraid of if I were Adobe (and it's been echoed a few comments back up the page) is what would happen if MS started tugging on the chain a bit too hard and started bending and shaping PDF to it's own end- creating some kind
Re:Maybe Adobe just got smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe Adobe just got smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
Then you extend them with your own software (in this case - maybe extensions that Acrobat doesn't work with) so that everyone who wants to use office pdf's in their full capacity has to have ms's pdf viewer. (this is how IE shut out netscape...)
Then you push XPS using your large installations of office and windows software and make pdf more and more irrelevant.
Re:Maybe Adobe just got smart. (Score:3, Interesting)
Bend it and twist it, but there's no proof that Adobe was even in a meeting with Microsoft about the subject...
It's ALL speculation, so discounting speculation other than your own is moronic.
Re:Maybe Adobe just got smart. (Score:2)
that's exactly what I thought (Score:2)
Re:Maybe Adobe just got smart. (Score:3, Informative)
Personally I having Save to PDF built into Office would've been good for the PDF standard, and find it difficult to sympathize wit
save as file using ps printer, ps2pdf (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
Re:save as file using ps printer, ps2pdf (Score:5, Informative)
I suspect that this is the part that Adobe is balking at -- that anyone would care and duplicate the beyond-standard work that they do with PDFmaker, to the point where someone with MS office really doesn't need to contact them anymore.
Re:save as file using ps printer, ps2pdf (Score:3, Insightful)
I could see MS pulling something where MS/PDF digital signatures aren't compatible with Adobe digital signatures when a contract needs an addenum and you'll have to use Office 2007 to complete the form.
Re:save as file using ps printer, ps2pdf (Score:2, Interesting)
Please keep in mind that Adobe has refused to comment, and all we hear are the Microsoft comments and interpretations thereof. There has to be more to it than meets the eye. If I were Adobe, I would be very very skittish when dealing with Microsoft. Microsoft is a dangerous predator, plain and simple (not that A
Re:save as file using ps printer, ps2pdf (Score:2)
I am personally using pdfcreator [sourceforge.net]. It installs as a printer and when I print to it, it pops up a dialog that ask me where I want to save the file. I think it internally prints to ps first, but as a user it is nice not having to call ps2pdf manually. There are other printer drivers that do the same, but I prefer to use an open source one.
What is the status of PDF then? (Score:4, Informative)
I guess I was misunderinformed?
Re:What is the status of PDF then? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What is the status of PDF then? (Score:3, Interesting)
One big problem with getting your legal news online is that you get a distorted version of the facts. In this matter, there are three points of view: MS's PoV, Adobe's PoV, and the truth.
Seeing as how MS pulled vice fighting, they were probably in the wrong.
Re:What is the status of PDF then? (Score:2)
Re:What is the status of PDF then? (Score:3, Interesting)
.doc vs .pdf (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:3, Interesting)
You know there are other free alternatives for creating PDF files on the windows platform besides Adobe Std. Edition, right?
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:2)
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:2)
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 [msdn.com]:
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 w
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:3, Insightful)
From that link:
Standard PDF is ... an option.
Fact 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 t
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:2)
Anyways, if you don't care about that benefit, and would likely only use
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:2)
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
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:2)
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:2)
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:2)
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/ [pdf995.com] which is substantially cheaper than Acrobat. There is also http://sector7g.wurzel6.de/pdfcreator/index_en.htm [wurzel6.de] 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
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:3, Informative)
Who's this going to hurt? (Score:2)
Unless, of course, MS was "embracing and extending" and their PDFs look as horrible as their Save as HTML documents.
Re:Who's this going to hurt? (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not sure it could get less efficient. Print to PDFs work by printing the document as an "image" and then essentially saving that inside of a PDF. Adobe Acrobat actually saves in a compressed ASCII format which is an order of magnitude or more efficient in terms of file size. MS Office would likely be the same.
Re:Who's this going to hurt? (Score:2)
Incorrect.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Re:Who's this going to hurt? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Who's this going to hurt? (Score:2)
Same with files created by ps2pdf.
Re:Who's this going to hurt? (Score:4, Informative)
Absolutely, positively untrue, and I can't imagine where you cooked this idea up from.
Pretty much every program on the planet can print to Postscript, (that's certainly not an image-only format) and it's just a short jump from there to converting it into a PDF.
I think people are getting confused about this... (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:I think people are getting confused about this. (Score:4, Interesting)
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).
Acrobat Falling? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Acrobat Falling? (Score:2)
Re:Acrobat Falling? (Score:2)
In short, the gimmicky crap is evidence that the company is now headed by the type of management
It's not only that Adobe fears for market share (Score:2)
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.
Re:It's not only that Adobe fears for market share (Score:2)
More likely to me is that Microsoft might have wanted to negociate a license to distribute Acrobat Reader with Office, possibly having Office install it where necessary.
However given o
Re:It's not only that Adobe fears for market share (Score:2)
Microsoft Sandbox Full of Pinworm(TM) (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Microsoft Sandbox Full of Pinworm(TM) (Score:2)
MS and XML (Score:2)
Re:MS and XML (Score:2)
Re:MS and XML (Score:2)
For anyone else who wants to verify for themselves, you check the Office 2003 schemas (web [microsoft.com] or download [microsoft.com]). The only binary types are the expected ones (picture, icon, movie, etc.).
If you're annoyed by the embedding of base64-encoded media, Office 2007 improves by using the Open Packaging Conventions [microsoft.com] format, which is basically a zipped collection of XML files and resources. Try it: Save any Office 2007 document and rename to .zip to view the contents. Content is stored in XML files, embedded images and fonts
Re:Microsoft Sandbox Full of Pinworm(TM) (Score:2)
Almost as if they were infested, mutated, and corrupted by the Flood from Halo. I find it interesting that Microsoft published and promoted a game containing a vivid metaphor of their "EEE" methodology.
Better yet are the quotes from 343 Guilty Spark [bungie.org], the ever-so-polite robotic floating ball (which I lik
Re:Microsoft Sandbox Full of Pinworm(TM) (Score:2)
XPS just a bargaining tool? (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Fair's Fair, and Double Standard's Aren't (Score:2, Interesting)
Adobe Sucks (Score:3, Interesting)
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!
This is mp3 vs. wma all over again... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
PDFCReator (Score:3, Informative)
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/ [sourceforge.net]
Re:PDFCReator (Score:2)
What does Microsoft want to do with the PDFs? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Meh. (Score:2)
However, I've got something I'm developing that may eventually inspire some sort of standard, and I'm also using the
Aren't we jumping the gun? (Score:2)
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 initi
What's the real story, I wonder? (Score:5, Insightful)
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) [adobe.com] 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.
Just a DRM question... (Score:2)
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).
Apple, Open Office and PDF (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft's attempt must use features that are not part of the standard, such as Layers or advanced color features.
Market Share (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
You Adobe defenders are hypocritical (or ignorant) (Score:4, Informative)
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 [ecma-international.org], 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.
Re:Where would we be without standards? (Score:2)
They aren't. Most non-flat, non-philips screws are used for reasons that have nothing to do with keeping the consumer out of the box, and everything to do with manufacturing processes. They grip the screwdriver in a different way, either allowing
Re:Where would we be without standards? (Score:2)
Of course the thing is that the necessary screwdrivers are readily available to buy by the general public over the web if you know where to look. At least they are here in the U.K. from the likes of RS and Farnell, and special tamper proof bit sets cost less than 10USD to fit a wide range of these odd screws.
Re:Probably not a smart move for Adobe.. (Score:2)
Re:I have your four points right here. (Score:2)
6. Want it? Fuck off, it's Mine!