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.

XPS

XML Paper Specification is quite transparently Microsoft’s PDF. The more worrying aspect should be for Adobe is that XPS will be a part of Vista (the next Windows operating system). Unlike Adobe Reader which requires people to download and install the PDF Viewer an XPS Viewer will be built directly into the operating system - straight out of the box.

The viewer in it’s current state reminds me an awful lot like the first version of the FlashPaper viewer, however the difference is that XPS isn’t just an end point document format - that’s just one part of it’s purpose.
So what is XPS?

The basic premise is to capture content into an interchangeable format for the purposes of distribution, printing and content repurposing - sound familiar? But it’s much more than just a ‘document packaging system’.

XPS is just one component in the overhaul of the graphics pipeline that Vista contains and is used in more places than PDF will ever be capable of. XPS is also used as the underlying print spool package format in Vista, which really says a lot about what XPS is.

It sounds a lot like the Mac OSX and it’s use of PDF at the operating system level doesn’t it?

OpenXML File Format

With the upcoming release of Office 12, Microsoft made the decision to embrace an xml based document file format for all of it’s Office applications. The reality of this move is that points 1. - 6. from the second list above have been satisfied. So does this mean that OpenXML will mean the end of PDF as we know it?

So should Adobe be Worried?

The question is probably more accurately asked as “Does this mean XPS/OpenXML will replace PDF?” In the short term I don’t think Microsoft can penetrate the PDF space for several reasons:

1. PDF is widely accepted as an ‘industry standard’
2. There are a number of third party PDF tools available
3. PDF is on all platforms, XPS/OpenXML is on Windows (there’s no plans for an XPS viewer on Linux that I’ve seen)

But in the longer term I think the challenge is for Adobe to continue to keep PDF as the format of choice for all industry professionals, this really means making sure that with each new release of PDF and Acrobat that Adobe listens to the needs of it’s users, otherwise they could find that Microsoft with Vista, XPS and OpenXML could mean the end of the Adobe PDF franchise.

Dave …….

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 at 8:13 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.