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].
Re:Word Dilution (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Word Dilution (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Word Dilution (Score:3, Interesting)
This is so true. What's funny is that I read an article in the WSJ during my train ride into NYC one morning and kinda chuckled over the fact that the article said how "hacker" has now gained a good connotation and "it has shed its nefarious undertones." The point of the article was that "hacker" used to mean bad bad computer villain and now it's a term for a clever computer person. What made me laugh is that the author was completely blind to the fact that the original meaning of hacker didnt have a negative connotation associated with it and that really people are just now using it more along the lines of its original meaning (albeit somewhat deviated). I made a mental note to email the author to alert him to this fact. I forgot to do that, but many people didn't. Seems like the MIT folk were the quickest to chime in with comments such as:
When I was at the Artificial Intelligence lab at MIT in the mid-1960s working for Marvin Minsky, the word "hack" referred to a clever bit of programming: for instance, one might work for several days in order to save a word or two of memory. (In the days before mass online storage, saving a word or two of memory might make the difference between a program running and not running.)
or
This is an addition to your history of the words "hack" and "hacker." At MIT, a "hack" has meant (for at least 40 years, maybe more) a very clever, and usually very public, prank. The rules have always been that the hack must be ethical and not do permanent damage. Typically, they require great planning and teamwork (in addition to secrecy) by the students who perpetrate the hack.
For people with WSJ subscriptions:
Original Article [wsj.com]
Readers' Comments [wsj.com]
Re:Word Dilution (Score:2, Interesting)
Gay is another word that has totally changed its meaning. Liberal, Sophisticated (tried a sophisticated wine lately?), for instance, not to mention such subtlties as Freedom Fries, etc.
A language that stagnates, dies. Much as you may want to set it in concrete, it isn't going to happen, because English is a living, changing language. And the dictionary writers fully recognize this - that's why they issue new versions of their product every 10 years or so - not to force all and sundry to purchase their works, but because the language has cxhanged.
Most of the rude little four letter words that we mostly shy away from in venues such as this one have good Anglo-Saxon roots, and as such, were freely used in polite society by that community. Funnily ewnough, a lot of them are coming back into more common usage than they have enjoyed for several hundred years.
Scuttlebutt is in use in your navy (or was, the last time I looked), but its meaning is nothing like what it originally meant.
"He fell for it, Lock, Stock and Barrell" still gets used, but what does it REALLY mean?
"Hook line and sinker" is a similar, but still identifiable, simile to the above, of course.
Face it, you want to strangle the language, and not let it evolve naturally, you're just an old fuddy-duddy reactionary. In that, you have plenty of soul mates, I'm sure.
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:Word Dilution (Score:3, Funny)
The name of the liberal party is "Venstre" meaning "left". Go figure.
Re:Word Dilution (Score:3, Funny)
The Killers (Score:4, Insightful)
Embrace, extend and extinguish (Score:2)
"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
Re:Embrace, extend and extinguish (Score:2)
No, I meant it as a cunning and witty pun to portray to other intellectually competent individuals, my sense of dissatisfaction at the incompetence and political bias existent within the DOJ which resulted in allowing Microsoft to get off pretty much Scot-free...
Re:The Killers (Score:2)
Just remember, you keep what you kill.
Adobe is screwed (Score:3, Interesting)
Some examples? (Score:2)
Re:Some examples? (Score:2)
Re: Adobe is screwed? Ha. (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
Re: Adobe is screwed? Ha. (Score:3, Informative)
There's nothing in there for interactivity though, it's strictly a fixed document format.
Re: Adobe is screwed? Ha. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re: Adobe is screwed? Ha. (Score:3, Informative)
Apple made a big deal out of "Display PDF" in Mac OS X. However, Display PDF's really just:
Standards (Score:5, Interesting)
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.;
Re:Standards (Score:2)
MS shows off their prototype XPS printers and mentions that major printer manufacturers are signed on.
Re:Standards (Score:2)
A bigger problem, in my experience, is that when you give a PDF file to a commercial printer, you run into problems like these:
I'd like to see more details on what kind of printers they're talking about building support for XPS into. $40 home inkjet printers? $600 laser printers? $10,000 docutechs?
I would see this working to the disadvantage of OSS, at least in the short term. MS will have XPS support immediately, and it will be left to the OSS players to catch up. In the long term, however, I can see it being a good thing; it really is dangerous to have so much depending on Adobe's good will.
Citation Please (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [waggeneredstrom.com] (MS's PR agency) would never do...
Re:Citation Please (Score:3, Informative)
Fuji Xerox presents Windows(R) Vista Compatible Prototype at PDC 2005 [64.233.161.104]
Not a thing correct (Score:5, Informative)
Please, in the future, before posting an explanation kindly know what in the hell you're babbling on about.
PostScript [wikipedia.org] and PCL [slashdot.org] are most certainly used for nearly the same purposes: A Page Description Language, aka PDL [wikipedia.org]. 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 [adobe.com] (a well written brief history [prepressure.com] 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 [adobe.com] documented [adobe.com] and it is possible to recreate them, with Ghostscript [wikipedia.org] 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.
Re:Adobe is screwed (Score:2)
If MS really does open the standard, I think it will be good, because it will force Adobe to actually compete in the market. Maybe they will actually make Adobe reader work faster, and stop crippling some of its features in an attempt to make you buy Acrobat Pro.
Re:Adobe is screwed (Score:2)
Re:Adobe is screwed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Adobe is screwed (Score:2)
Re:Adobe is screwed (Score:2)
I love adobe (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope they die real soon.
Re:I love adobe (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I love adobe (Score:3, Interesting)
Some of its features are on the face of it quite good. But forcing reboots, nagging the user to pay for inexplicable "enhancements"... shifting vocabulary across releases, random "features" that offer no value to anyone... it's just painful, painful software.
If Microsoft destroy them and in the process make sure that Vista's impending failure results in us all using nice, slick, GhostScript implementations in the future it will not be a MOMENT too soon.
Re:I love adobe (Score:3, Insightful)
I had to think for a few about this title (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Why does Microsoft keep trying to hire The Killers (Score:2, Funny)
About 6 years ago... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:About 6 years ago... (Score:2, Funny)
Yes. Yes-it-would-be too-much-to-ask.
Hmmm... (Score:2)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2)
I seem to recall that on /., anything Pro-Microsoft is suspiciously Pro-Microsoft.
Wow, for such intelligent people, we sure are objective and skeptical.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2)
I seem to recall that on /., anything Pro-Microsoft is suspiciously Pro-Microsoft.
It's more like anything that isn't obviously anti-Microsoft, is suspiciously pro-Microsoft.
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.
Re:Details? (Score:2)
bingo! (Score:2)
Re:Details? (Score:2)
In all fairness... (Score:2)
That being said, I'm not sure it's worth splitting the market with a similar competing format just for these advantages.
Re:In all fairness... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In all fairness... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In all fairness... (Score:2)
Re:In all fairness... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:In all fairness... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:In all fairness... (Score:2, Interesting)
Procedural generation of content isn't worth the extra hassle of getting programming language style bugs (stack over/underflows, infinite loops, etc) in your documents.
Re:In all fairness... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:In all fairness... (Score:2)
The real interesting thing about XML-based file formats is that you can easliy generate files dynamically, especially with technologies like XSLT.
That's not really an advantage over PDF, since you can easily generate PDFs with XML, XSL formatting objects and free tools. Plus there are lots and lots of other tools that already generate PDFs in various ways and from various formats.
Re:In all fairness... (Score:2)
Re:In all fairness... (Score:2)
In most cases, I think you'll already have an XML abstraction layer, which you'll convert to XPS with XSLT. But you can also just use XSLT to convert to XSLfo. The only advantage of XPS that I can see is if XPS is more expressive than XSLfo.
Re:In all fairness... (Score:2)
You just wait. I don't think that's going to last long. In fact, this might well mark the start of a feature race of XPS vs. PDF, leaving us with even more bloated formats, and open source renderers lagging miles behind the proprietary competition.
Re:In all fairness... (Score:2)
Also, I don't know how you think one would obtain or return the PDF form in the first place if you don't have internet access. Copy it on a USB drive, fill it out at home, and bring it back? Why not just fill out the form with a pen, jeebus.
Re:In all fairness... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In all fairness... (Score:2)
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.
Re:In all fairness... (Score:2)
I suppose we can conclude from this discussion, then, that all formats suck.
anything is better (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:anything is better (Score:2)
Ranting about acroread, etc. (Score:2)
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.
Re:anything is better (Score:2)
BTW, Acrobat reader can be made fast. Just disable the 472 plugins you don't need. Three seconds with Google will fix that if you can't figure it out by looking at the file structure.
Can We Please.... (Score:2)
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>
Re:Can We Please.... (Score:2)
Re:Can We Please.... (Score:2)
In the vernacular, something that is "Killer" is very good (eg, "They make a killer salsa, man!"). So a "Killer Application" is one that is so good that it will cause people to buy into the whole platform.
ECMA is warming up their rubber stamp (Score:4, Funny)
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:PDF is too complicated (Score:2)
htmldoc is gpl as well as commercial and included in ubuntu repositorys.
try it pdf isnt just acrobat.
Re:PDF is too complicated (Score:2, Funny)
Re:PDF is too complicated (Score:3, Informative)
Postscript is way too flexible, it is a freaking programming language, but pdf is in my oppinion just right. I don't agree with this "if it is xml, it is automatically portable, editable, etc." mindset. Xml could easilly be much less portable and much harder to edit than pdf.
Re:PDF is too complicated (Score:5, Informative)
And that's bad because...?
You want a programmatic way to generate PDF,
yet you eschew pdfTeX [tug.org], which is a
compiled language that produces PDF as native output,
and is a descendent of TeX, a language invented by
Knuth, a programmatic fellow if there ever was one.
Dick Grayson (Score:5, Funny)
Yes if Microsoft does this right (Score:2)
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.
How long until its usable (Score:2, Interesting)
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 good interim solution (Score:3, Informative)
Re:FoxIt reader is a good interim solution (Score:3, Informative)
example: the e-book version of Harrison's principle of internal medicine
Re:FoxIt reader is a good interim solution (Score:3, Informative)
SVG? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:SVG? (Score:3, Informative)
Those are the same comments people have made regarding Windows Presentation Foundation (AKA "Avalon") and XAML [microsoft.com]. Guess what? The pages in an XPS document are XAML files represented in a strict subset of WPF. In fact, the XPS viewer provided as part of .NET 3.0 is powered by WPF.
As for what differentiates it from SVG, WPF provides a higher level of elements that do not exist in SVG, namely UI controls [microsoft.com] such as DockPanel, InkCanvas, TextBox, and even 3D content via Viewport3D. The New York Times Reader [cnet.com] is built purely using WPF. You can't do that with SVG without writing the controls from scratch (but please enlighten me if I'm wrong). Therefore, while XPS itself isn't much different from SVG, the architecture in which XPS resides reaches far beyond SVG.
There's still another argument against XPS/XAML/WPF: Why didn't Microsoft simply extend SVG? IMO it would break one point of elegance regarding WPF, which is that the XML elements correspond directly to the .NET WPF objects and follow .NET naming conventions. For example, XPS has a Path element with a Fill attribute; the .NET analog is a Path class with a Fill property of type Brush. There are other arguments as well, but I'm not too familiar with them.
Acrobat-killer Submitted to Standards Body (Score:2, Funny)
What's wrong with Acrobat? (Score:2, Interesting)
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
DjVu! Shame on OSS (Score:2)
I fear this says something about OSS --why in the long run it will be maginalized by monolopy's like Microsoft.
PLEASE let Acrobat die (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Times are a changin' (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Times are a changin' (Score:4, Informative)
We already have a standard, open, format for this sort of presentation. We don't need another. We REALLY don't need another from a company that is known to "embrace and extinguish" competing implementations of standards.
Re:Times are a changin' (Score:2)
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:Times are a changin' (Score:2)
Re:Times are a changin' (Score:2)
Re:If only pdf would really die. (Score:4, Interesting)
Especially the possibilities for inline fonts and ocr'd text using the original font are great.
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:If only pdf would really die. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If only pdf would really die. (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:If only pdf would really die. (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:If only pdf would really die. (Score:2)