With all the current noise about the legal matters surrounding the inclusion of a PDF generation function in Office 12 and Adobe’s problem with that, it got me thinking about some of the challenges that Adobe will be facing from Microsoft on other fronts.

There’s no question that the folks at Adobe developed one of the most influential and useful file formats we have ever seen. From my point of view several key factors set PDF apart from other file formats:

1. The structure is known and publicly documented.
2. It’s very actively maintained.
3. Anyone can create PDF files.
4. It’s truly portable and without change.
5. Resolution independent.
6. It’s heritage comes from Postscript

In retrospect Microsoft’s core binary file formats -XLS, DOC and PPT are:

1. Not publicly documented
2. Not always updated with each new version of Office
3. Can only be created by Microsoft Apps or very few third party tools
4. Windows Only (and Mac but not 100% compatible)
5. What’s resolution?
6. Owned by Microsoft

Microsoft have developed a new specification for an electronic paper technology system for the creation, viewing, conversion and printing of content into the new format. This system will be built right into Vista and that specification is called XML Paper Specification (XPS). This really addresses the concerns people have with the existing core document formats.

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