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I know, I am bored with that one too.

I have used Vista extensively, and I can assure you, it is a lot more than a service pack.

If I were you, I would hold off and use XP service pack three instead !

It's boring, that after an OS was developed for 5 years, still people _have_ to argue about wether it is superiour to a service pack or not.

Oh well, no! It's kinda funny!

Well, i have one thing to say, only one: There's no post about Windows Vista without a comment with the link to news features in Vista at wikipedia.

Mod me down if you want ;-)

Windows XP can read XPS with an add-on that the system automatically downloads and installs for you (with your permission of course).

Mod parent up even further. Some points deserve more than just 5.

Maybe they were afraid that Adobe would be outraged and threaten to sue them if they posted it in PDF - they way they did when MS added a save to PDF to Word 2007.

Except that Adobe never did such a thing. It was merely newspaper spin. Adobe never made any threat in regard to PDF. The only thing Adobe said was MS would be sued _if_ MS did something illegal. They never threatened with sueing over the PDF feature.

>sued _if_ MS did something illegal

Hmmmm...I'm sorry but to me this is nebulous for-the-newspapers spin. At this point MS's intentions with XPS and PDF are clear. Why doesn't Adobe just say exactly what they believe might be illegal? My guess is it's because they are still feeling around for what they could get a court – specifically in the EU to agree with them on.

The facts are that "Save to PDF" is the #1 requested feature of word. MS added it (along with XPS). Adobe demanded that they remove the feature. I guess they considered it "something illegal". (It is an open to implement format as long as Adobe doesn't feel that you will be taking money (ie corporate Acrobat buyers) away from them.) You could make a strong case that the EU would have agreed with them on this. Okay. Save to PDF doesn't come with the Word anymore. This is Adobe's doing. They also wanted MS to charge for the (still existing) add on AND for the ability to save to XPS! The last point is pure (attempted) blackmail.

The bottom line is they don't want any portable format shipping with Word. The bizarre thing to me is that no one would have taken a second look at XPS if Save to PDF would have been an option. I can't imagine that XPS is going anywhere but if does – its Abobe's doing.

The only one claiming Adobe demanded "Save to PDF" removed is an unidentified source within Microsoft claiming the Adobe CEO sent a letter. Adobe have been deliberately closelipped about this, adding to the confusion.

But fact is, there's no evidence for such claims - just a lot of rumours, which everybody seems to brew on.

openoffice now supports the new office formats, there's also this:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=941B3470-3...

Oh great! let's go out and buy Office 2007 just to read Vista's new features! Sure thing!... I laugh at Microsoft marketing methods. Really stupid actually.

You don't need Office 2007 or Vista to view XPS files:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/default.mspx

Though I guess you DO need some version of Windows (unless someone has built an XPS viewer for Windows), which is really kind of dumb ... if you want to advertise features for your new OS, why the hell would you want to prevent people using competing OS's from reading the document?

Excellent point. I would mod you up twice, if I could. This is just another one of the examples of the way Microsoft irritates me.

"if you want to advertise features for your new OS, why the hell would you want to prevent people using competing OS's from reading the document?"

I'm guessing their real target is Windows XP users. It took them a while to get people to switch to XP in the first place.

Also, I think it is marketing 101. The leader denies the existence of competition. The competition always references the leader. That is why you have the I'm a Mac commercials from Mac.

I'm actually surprised that MS hasn't hired on the I'm a PC guy. Have him blab about how great Vista is. I promise you that it would work.

Yeah, except he's a pretty dedicated Mac user in real life

if you want to advertise features for your new OS, why the hell would you want to prevent people using competing OS's from reading the document?

MS have given up on competing OS users. Secretly they know that having tried a decent OS, your average user would rather stick pins in their eyes before wrecking their computer with Vista ;o)

Edited 2006-11-30 11:11

Though I guess you DO need some version of Windows (unless someone has built an XPS viewer for Windows), which is really kind of dumb ... if you want to advertise features for your new OS, why the hell would you want to prevent people using competing OS's from reading the document?

Because they don't really care? Aiming to Windows users is a good idea, because you're aiming to the biggest portion of the market share. They're in such a position that don't really care about the competition.

And tell me: When did Microsoft became format and standards respectful? They have "enhanced" versions of pretty much any already existing format or standard (MSIL, XSS, etc).

Yes, but they could still provide it as a simple .doc for XP users. Is it not MS-proprietary enough now, after OOo?

//Is it not MS-proprietary enough now, after OOo?//

That is about the size of it, it would seem.

Microsoft's official position "We won't support ODF because there is no demand" and then later "we will support ODF only by translation to and from OOXML first" is transparently silly.

Now that WordPerfect is going to support ODF:
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS6047809291.html

... and the OpenDocument Foundation itself is making a plugin for MS Office that will read and write direct to ODF and not have to go via OOXML at all, Microsoft's position on these attempted lock-in formats looks sillier and sillier by the day.

XPS is even more irrelevant than OOXML is.

MS just wants you to install XPS plugin and .Net3.

Exactly. While there is nothing inherently evil in that desire, I think most technology and format lock-ins started just as innocently. Remember, Microsoft still is a monopoly and will be one for the foreseeable future.

XPS is an ECMA format. It's XML-based. So, it's no more of a "format lock-in" than ODF.

XPS is an ECMA format. It's XML-based. So, it's no more of a "format lock-in" than ODF

You got to be kidding. XML doesn't prevent format lock-in, as it authorizes blobs and other binaries inside.
ECMA doesn't prevent lock-in either.
You can tell if one XML format has no lock-in from the DTD (and specs), not just because it's XML.

Read for comprehension next time. I didn't say that being XML-based prevents lock-in. I said "it's no more of a 'format lock-in' than ODF". Do you understand the distinction?

EMCA standards are not open standards per default.

EMCA standards are not open standards per default.

Well, it's not clear what you mean by "open". That sounds like a flimsy canard to attack XPS -- and it's essentially meaningless, given the following...

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/xpslicense.mspx

"Microsoft freely licenses XPS technology to encourage its use as general-purpose documents. Microsoft grants a royalty-free copyright license to copy, display, and distribute the XML Paper Specification. Microsoft also grants a royalty-free patent license to read, write and render XPS Documents. Execution of the licenses is straightforward and does not require the company to sign and return the license agreement. There is a requirement that any XPS implementation that is distributed, licensed or sold contain a notice in the source code of the implementation indicating that Microsoft may have intellectual property associated with the implementation and to provide a link to where the license may be obtained from Microsoft. The patent license also includes a covenant not to sue provision for companies engaged in certain businesses; the provision contents and reasoning are explained below.

It also contains a Covenant Not To Sue Provision. So, really, your definition of "open" is meaningless.

Really look at the "New and upgraded applications" because most of those should be packages with an OS and don't have better alternatives.

Really seriously look what those "users" who got home have as an upgrade path, have the Wiki entry is gone.

Seriously look at the biggest waste of space "Windows XP features excluded" when most are just repackaged old apps under new apps.

a company with 70,000 people did this, in over five years.

Edited 2006-11-30 05:33

They don't control PDF as well as they do with the .doc format: if they can control your data they have absolute control on what OS and Office software you're going to use. In other words, the usual abuse of monopoly game they've been playing during all of these years. As simple as that.

rehdon

It's different. PDF is pretty portable. XPS is readable on a tiny (ableit growing) minority of users.

Much better! ;o)

XPS is better than PDF.
http://www.amyuni.com/blog/?p=8

//XPS is better than PDF.
http://www.amyuni.com/blog/?p=8 //

That page is weird. XPS and PDF achieve similar things, but ODF is a quite different format for a quite different purpose.

PDF beats XPS easily in several major, major areas that are not considered by the linked page:

(1) PDF is open to be implemented,
(2) PDF is cross-platform, and
(3) PDF is supported (in terms of both applications and in the amount of existing data in that format) far, far more widely than XPS.

Those three facts alone are killer facts for the XPS format.

// (1) PDF is open to be implemented,

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/xpsspec.mspx

So is XPS. Here's the full spec.

So is XPS. Here's the full spec.

Indirect it's not because you can't install the viewer on a platform other than windows.

Is this what we are going to see spin-off from the MS-Novell deal?

It's not written in a standard so we can't read it.
And when a would-be document standard include things like retaining print spooling informations, I wonder how you could implement it while being portable and multiplatform.

lol. the spec is wrapped in a self extracting exe rather a zip. furthermore the format of the spec is.... xps! microsoft is hilarious. you have to have windows, to have a chance of implementing xps on an alt OS.

No, it's not. It's an openly documented proprietary standard.

yeah, even my NeXT can read PDFs fine... Loads of older systems will probably never get support for XPS but can view (and sometimes edit/create) PDFs just fine.

Try to be far more critic next time :
- A blog is everything except an authority on the matter
- what advantage is it to be "XML based extensible format" ? This is pretty stupid, as the only lack of PDF here is not being XML, which is irrelevant.
- XPS is not portable, and surely not multiplatform : this is a flat lie
- Ability to edit document is pretty stupid, but even then, the table is wrong on that matter for PDF
- Retaining print job information ... What does this have to do in a document exactly ? And XPS supports this nonsense !!
- Unicode only support for multinational character sets is considered poor support !
- It says PDF doesn't support remote document printing !!
- ...

Anyway, the author or the table doesn't say that XPS is better than PDF at all, that's just your wishful thinking.

"- XPS is not portable, and surely not multiplatform : this is a flat lie "

The format is open to be implemented which means you can start making an XPS viewer on the platform of your choice today!

The format is open to be implemented which means you can start making an XPS viewer on the platform of your choice today!

Than whereis the source code?

The format is open to be implemented which means you can start making an XPS viewer on the platform of your choice today!

You just described an open format. You still did not described a portable or multiplatform format.
Portable and multiplatform apply to the code.
So for now, it's still a flat lie that XPS is portable, and even more blatant lie that it's multiplatform.

The standard is not open. It is a openly documented proprietary standard. Being ECMA does not make it an open standard, and being an open standard does not make the standard an ECMA standard.

An open standard will however most often be an ISO-standard.

One benefit is that it is much easier to extract 'protected' fonts from the XPS files. I just downloaded the spec today and I've already got a working font extractor.

//it's the STANDARD in the business world//

Careful what you mean by that word "standard".

Standards are set by standards bodies, not by the majority of useage in any context ... even if that context is the "business world" (read American businesses).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standards_bodies

One such standards-setting body is the ISO/IEC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_for_Standar...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Electrotechnical_Commiss...

For example, it is often claimed that Microsoft's .doc is the current standard format for digital storage of documents. That is not actually so. The standard format is OpenDocument.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
"OpenDocument or ODF, short for the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications, is an open format for saving and exchanging office documents such as memos, reports, books, spreadsheets, databases, charts, and presentations. This standard was developed by the OASIS industry consortium and based upon the XML format originally created by OpenOffice.org. ODF was approved as an OASIS standard on May 1, 2005, and was approved for release as an ISO and IEC International Standard (ISO/IEC 26300) on May 8, 2006."

So, to re-iterate, that word "standard" does not necessarily mean "what everyone uses".

Edited 2006-11-30 12:55

Actually, if you have something that many or everybody uses then that thing would be a "de-facto standard". And just because a standard has been set by a standard body, doesn't mean the standard will prevail, nor that the standard is usable by others. Especially ECMA-standards can be dangerous since they tend to be patent-encumbered.

Hmm.. what's the offensive about that post?

You should not be reading this stuff while you are at work, because you have other things to do

On the other hand, if your work is related to Vista in your company then i guess you should have full access rights to your machine

Edited 2006-11-30 15:21

Umm, no, it's not. There is an XPS reader that has been available for some time now.