Interesting article over at ars technica: “Microsoft’s PDF-killer heads towards standards body”. In private conversations, I predicted that this would happen. It will be interesting to see the industry response, if any.
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I’ve been poking around about XPS and it is interesting: perhaps a better example of innovation from them, but deeply tying the document format to the print spooler. Ouch!
Looks like the file format aspects could warrant support in a standards body but the ties to the new printing architecture is same-old same-old, justifying attention from any local anti-trust commission one would care to name. Another phoney ECMA-MOOX (but even worse).
Though we’ve been acclimatized for ten-odd years, the bold aggressiveness of this, along with other plays around Vista, might still shock before breakfast.
I’ll be interested to see how widely this will be picked up. My company just bought a couple of photocopiers and scanners than scan to PDF. Even if I wanted to change to something else, which I don’t, I’ll be tied into PDF for a long time.