Acrobat-killer Submitted to Standards Body 326
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.'"
Word Dilution (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [google.com].
Killer [slashdot.org].
The Killers (Score:4, Insightful)
I love adobe (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope they die real soon.
Re:I love adobe (Score:3, Insightful)
Details? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
anything is better (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:In all fairness... (Score:3, Insightful)
PDF is too complicated (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:If only pdf would really die. (Score:4, Insightful)
Acrobat is horrible, but that has no more to do with PDF than Internet Explorer has to do with HTML.
Re:In all fairness... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Times are a changin' (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Times are a changin' (Score:5, Insightful)
This is how Adobe strongarmed MS in removing it from the shipping version of Office, as Adobe was going to demand licensing fees. (However it can be distributed separately without incurring the fees.)
Adobe truly screwed themselves here, they would have been the all time standard with MS giving them full support in Office, but instead they wanted to keep MS at bay and make money off the Office name. Adobe messed up.
From my inside MS sources, the XPS was never meant to become a PDF replacement, even though it has the technology to do so, and even offers more features than the PDF specification. However the move by Adobe to try to screw with MS with the Office Plug-in and taking it even further by raising contention with the whole Vista Composer that is an XAML/XPS technology came as a complete slap to MS.
Prior to Adobe trying to squeeze MS for money and try to stop Vista because of the inherent XPS/XAML composer, MS decided they didn't have to play nice in this market, and I honestly don't blame them.
MS worked with Adobe up until just a few month ago when all of this started coming down. MS even was helping Adobe with using the Vista composer technologies for Adobe products, including their PDF reader. As in MS mind they had no intention of pushing XPS outside of the Vista world which could hurt Adobe, now however with Adobe's actions, they don't feel any obligation to stay out of Adobe's playground and can pursuing opening and dropping XPS technology to all OS platforms.
Re:I love adobe (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft Isn't THAT Powerful (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Word Dilution (Score:4, Insightful)
Only in America. Out here in the civilised Rest Of The World, it still means "free from prejudice or bigotry; open-minded or tolerant, esp. free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values, etc."
It took me a while, and many raised eyebrows, before I realised that some Americans use the word as an INSULT.
Re:Details? (Score:2, Insightful)
Look at any 'Old Technical Document Repository' webite, i.e. The Boat-Anchor Manual Archive [sbc.edu]. Tons and tons of old equipment manual pages scanned as bitmaps, with many 'contained' in big fat ugly PDF files. It isn't the best 'container' people could use, but it's become a defacto standard for a lot of people.
Re:In all fairness... (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem here is that this allows the user to easily modify the rest of the document, which is not usually what is wanted. When it comes to Word and OpenOffice, then one you have to pay for and the other is not always the nicest thing to use. PDF have a free viewer and anyone can implement one if they wish (spec available). The truth is I just want something that works and allows me to easily share documents with other people, without them having to fork out money in order to view my documents. Format wars only help the people fighting them and eveyone else just ends up being losers.