Adobe makes money on the authoring tools (and maybe licensing the format; not sure about this). Having Windows being able to handle PDFs out of the box would only boost them.

Why is PDF a crappy format? What do you use when you want to send someone a document and you want to ensure that he sees exactly what you see?

Adobe Reader really is a horrible and slow program...

The greater concern with Microsoft, though, would be proprietary extensions.

I can't see how this could be possible, regardless of platform or tools

"The greater concern with Microsoft, though, would be proprietary extensions.

I could be wrong here, but I assume that Adobe Acrobat is still the main tool for publishing PDFs, and if that's the case then Adobe has a much bigger opportunity than Microsoft to push proprietary extensions.

I simply can't see how one could express a UI in terms that could properly scale up to 1920*1200 or down to 640*320 resolutions.

OpenOffice and LibreOffice both have good file format compatibility with MS Office, they both have a very good interoperable native file format (ODF), and they both have "export to PDF" functionality right there on the main toolbar.

LibreOffice (at least) also has a "PDF import" extension.
http://www.libreoffice.org/features/extensions/
"PDF Import: the PDF Import extension allows you to import and modify PDF documents. Results with 100% layout accuracy can be achieved with the "PDF/ODF hybrid file" format, which this extension also provides. A hybrid PDF/ODF file is a PDF file that contains an embedded ODF source file. Hybrid PDF/ODF files will be opened in LibreOffice as an ODF file without any layout changes."

Most Linux desktop operating system distributions ship with a "print to PDF file" pseudo-printer installed.

Why is PDF a crappy format?

How widespread are those, though? I was under the impression that Acrobat was still the industry standard, especially if you want to use the more advanced features of PDF.

What do you use when you want to send someone a document and you want to ensure that he sees exactly what you see? Adobe's Reader is crappy

Sure it has a lot of bloat, with scripts and forms and whatnot

AppX will just be one way (among many) to deliver applications. MS takes backwards-compatibility too seriously to abandon native code.

Since using it means that one has a very full-featured, work-alike free Office Suite program with better interoperability than MS Office, and which doubles as a PDF generation and edit facility as a bonus, then it is very surprising that this number is not much higher.

The features that are supported are listed here:
http://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Export_as_PDF

This is probably not everything that can be done using Adobe software, but it does seem to cover a lot of bases and should be perfectly adequate for most people and use cases.

They do? I must have missed a big announcement. Last I checked, you got to write your app once for OS X, and then rewrite the whole UI for iOS using a different framework. Sure, there's a third-party framework in development that will let you use iOS's UIKit APIs on OS X, but even that's not a complete solution, and it's not something offered by Apple.

Windows Phone 7 apps can share much more of their codebase with desktop OSes (Windows *and* Mac) via Silverlight. So Microsoft is already ahead in this area, and providing a common app distribution format will put them firmly in the lead.

That's one fine incentive for developers - write your application, and have it scale from phones to tablets to desktops. Apple already offers something similar, of course, so Microsoft is a tad bit late to the game.

I agree that XPS should never have been born

I disagree that switching to XML as the default fileformat in Office is a bad idea. It made filesizes a lot smaller and interoperability a lot easier

and for a loooooong time (still?) the MSXML libraries were (are?) considered the fastest and most standard compliant libraries for parsing xml

Not sure about this. Adobe Reader seems reasonably fast lately. I mean, I can remember absolutely dreading PDF reader, but newer versions seem okay.

I think this article is even more clear:

http://www.osnews.com/story/24233/Is_Microsoft_Working_Towards_NT_S...

"Since using it means that one has a very full-featured, work-alike free Office Suite program with better interoperability than MS Office, and which doubles as a PDF generation and edit facility as a bonus, then it is very surprising that this number is not much higher.

You can argue the toss all you like, but this won't change overnight.

"The features that are supported are listed here:
http://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Export_as_PDF

This is probably not everything that can be done using Adobe software, but it does seem to cover a lot of bases and should be perfectly adequate for most people and use cases.

I work with a system that has 10000s of PDFs and I have had calls where Foxit and Mac PDF readers are not rendering it correctly, therefore we mandate Adobe Reader since our publication team use Adobe Pro PDF tools. So to ensure compatibility I can only recommend using Adobe PDF reader.

djvu is

Businesses may use msoffice, but they use several different versions and compatibility between them can be quite poor for all but the simplest of documents... Someone using openoffice often doesn't even get noticed.

But yes, PDF is the only sensible format if you want to preserve your formatting, and osx/linux actually include far better out of the box support for pdf than anything microsoft has.

MS Office mainly competes with older versions of itself.

this is so that they only have to work and two different OS's and not three.

Actually, between 10% and 20% of machines have an OpenOffice variant installed, depending on the country. This holds just as true for business machines as it does for personal machines.

No it won't. The OpenOffice (or variant) installed base is creeping upwards at only about 1% or so per year. Still, at least it is going up, and the MS Office installed base, likewise, is falling.

The features that are supported are listed here:
http://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Export_as_PDF

This is probably not everything that can be done using Adobe software, but it does seem to cover a lot of bases and should be perfectly adequate for most people and use cases.

I think you may be a little confused, the features I showed were for PDF export from LibreOffice. (LibreOffice and OpenOffice have a large team of programmers working on the project). Anyway, those are the features one may use when generating a PDF from LibreOffice.

The reader software I use is Okular:
http://kde.org/applications/graphics/okular/

Okular has fantastic PDF compatibility, I have never come across a PDF file it couldn't render.

Unlike Adobe reader, Okular is a document viewer which supports multiple formats: PDF, PS, Tiff, CHM, DjVu, Images, DVI, XPS, ODT, Fiction Book, Comic Book, Plucker, EPub, Fax.

Some of the lesser-used supported formats do not have quite the same level of support in Okular that PDF format has.

I can't speak for the support of single-author amateur freeware programs for Windows and Mac, but Okular has excellent support from a team of programmers.

http://okular.kde.org/team.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poppler_%28software%29

It only occupies about 20MB on disk, as a bonus.

http://okular.kde.org/

http://okular.kde.org/formats.php

Okular purportedly works on multiple platforms, including but not limited to Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, *BSD, etc. Perhaps you should look into it.

Enjoy.

In a professional environment, where documents are (sadly) passed around in .doc format, OOo has no place whatsoever.

Except, of course, that OpenOffice is one of the most horrible programs ever devised by man, and ever since Office 2007, the gap has only widened. Recommending OpenOffice as a valid alternative to the polished and remarkably speedy Office 2007 or 2010 is incredibly disingenuous.

Not only does OpenOffice have a horrid interface, its .doc compatibility is downright abysmal While that surely is through no fault of their own, it is a fact of life that people have to deal with. In a professional environment, where documents are (sadly) passed around in .doc format, OOo has no place whatsoever.

MS Office wouldn't help put the $ in MS if OpenOffice didn't feel so dated in comparison.

"Actually, between 10% and 20% of machines have an OpenOffice variant installed, depending on the country. This holds just as true for business machines as it does for personal machines.

But we already have a working solution that our users know how to use. It is called Adobe Reader and works on Windows, Mac and Linux. It comes installed as standard as part of our "standard" Windows XP install.

Adobe Reader works on Windows, Mac and Linux which is pretty much everyone (even as a BSD guy I accept that support is limited for my OS). For the vast majority of people Adobe Reader will work for them. Maybe you should look into that.

For the business I work in ... We have Adobe at both ends this ensures compatibility and therefore we have less support calls from users.

In Windows 9 they'll have to add a PDF Reader Ballot Screen

But XPS was more than just a "PDF Alternative" given that the scope was to be a language that was universal for all printers as to replace the current crop of GDI based printers (aka Winprinters) and without the royalty hassles associated with Postscript. The problem with it is that Microsoft never went about transforming it from a Windows/Microsoft only technology into something present on Mac and Windows so as a consequence even though it was open it was only implemented on one platform

Many printers interop directly with PDFs too, especially when you get into the commercial grade, print-shop level printers, or systems like what is used by various publishing houses. Microsoft was trying to displace PDF at that level; but they like PDF too much and for good reason - it was specifically designed for them.

And since when has Microsoft ever made anything they did operate on more than just the Windows platform? Even MS Office for Mac is dramatically different than any other version of MS Office, including file format support.

So no matter how good OpenOffice may ever be, MS will still dump money into Office - even if they have entirely lost the market. That's just how MS operates.

"So no matter how good OpenOffice may ever be, MS will still dump money into Office - even if they have entirely lost the market. That's just how MS operates.

If Microsoft provided an integrated free download for Mac OS X it would be interesting how the situation might have changed, especially for printer vendors wishing to reduce the amount they have to pay per unit back to Adobe for any patented technology used. From what I understand Apple gets around some of the patented parts of PDF by simply not supporting some of the more esoteric features of the PDF specification.

The lack of focus has always been Microsoft's greatest downfall.

which yields the bug ridden, virus ridden, under-performant, bloated software that is Windows and Office that we have today.

In your country, which is somewhat behind the times, OpenOffice was measured at 9% over a year ago.

http://www.webmasterpro.de/portal/news/2010/02/05/international-ope...

However, the situation may soon improve somewhat in your country now that the UK government has embarked on a new procurement policy preferring royalty-free open standards and open source.

http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20110...

Adobe reader is very slow and bloated, it takes absolutely ages to load compared with a modern alternatives, and on Windows systems it is a huge security risk.

MS Office 2007 is a joke. They leveled the playing field for their customers to move to other Office Suites - transition costs (software, training, etc.) were actually lower to go to OpenOffice simply due to the retraining required for Office 2003 to Office 2007;

OpenOffice's primary issue is speed, primarily due to a poor internal architecture, reliance on Java, etc. They fix that, and OpenOffice will be far better performing.

"which yields the bug ridden, virus ridden, under-performant, bloated software that is Windows and Office that we have today.

"MS Office 2007 is a joke. They leveled the playing field for their customers to move to other Office Suites - transition costs (software, training, etc.) were actually lower to go to OpenOffice simply due to the retraining required for Office 2003 to Office 2007;

OpenOffice is not a functional equivalent to even Office 2003. Put someone who uses Excel all day in front of it and they will give you a long list of complaints. I've seen this first hand.

"OpenOffice's primary issue is speed, primarily due to a poor internal architecture, reliance on Java, etc. They fix that, and OpenOffice will be far better performing.

Your view of OpenOffice and Office is superficial and based on light use.

Win7 has come a long way - but it is still very bug ridden

under performant

and laden with viruses

Actually it is. Yes, it is suppose to be only optional. But try running OpenOffice without Java installed.

I work with a system that has 10000s of PDFs and I have had calls where Foxit and Mac PDF readers are not rendering it correctly, therefore we mandate Adobe Reader since our publication team use Adobe Pro PDF tools. So to ensure compatibility I can only recommend using Adobe PDF reader.

Well I'd say I was semi-joking Of course it's kinda funny, but honestly, I'd really expect something like that to happen, because it's indeed a threat to Adobe. On the other hand, I never really understood why they were forced to insert a browser ballot screen. They should be allowed to ship whatever they want, why should they be forced to offer third party browsers at all? I'm an Opera user and I hate IE, but for me it's perfectly fine if they only ship IE with Windows. Even without a ballot screen, Mozilla managed to gain 25% or so marketshare...