Microsoft opens second front against Adobe : With XPS.

[anandk]

"Silverlight, the rich media technology that Microsoft Corp. trotted out last week, isn’t Redmond’s only attack on Adobe Systems Inc.’s multimedia dominance.

In addition to Silverlight, touted as a potential Flash-killer, Microsoft is quietly putting the moves on Adobe’s other popular consumer technology, the Portable Document Format (PDF)...

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9017438&intsrc=hm_list

"...XPS, Microsoft's new rival to PDF ... the Redmond company is making the software ... avlbl for free to both consumers and pros..."

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r168/happyandy/vistaulti.gif

[goobimama]

PDF and flash are too widespread to be overthrown just like that. They are almost perfect at what they do so MS will have to come up with something really special to throw them off the top...

[gx_saurav]

PDF & flash are standerds from the starting days of Web. It will take atleast 4 years for MS to even shake these.

[rakeshishere]

Knew this info way back as Adobe was unhappy with this when office 2k7 was launched!

[iMav]

well it just makes things more complicated ... if i use xps the other person uses pdf its gonna be troublesome ... these guys should have a standard ...

[aryayush]

That is what everyone is fighting for. Everyone wants to set the standard, so to speak.

[blueshift]

who said pdf is a standard?
its just a widely used format.
soon there will be softwares that are XPS compatible. there 'll be converters available too.
Only time will decide where xps does stand in the 'market'.

[alsiladka]

I have used XPS, and must say like it better thn PDF. I downloaded the XPS version of Windows Vista Product Guide, which was also available as a PDF File.
The point to note was that PDF file was nearly double the size of XPS document, you cant rule out that since MS would like to publicize XPS, they may have done so, but i get a feeling that XPS does have a better compression rate than PDF.

Can anyone verify this?

[rakeshishere]

The point to note was that PDF file was nearly double the size of XPS document, you cant rule out that since MS would like to publicize XPS, they may have done so, but i get a feeling that XPS does have a better compression rate than PDF.

Can anyone verify this?

The compression rate of XPS is damn high compared to .DOCX.Chk them here (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bbc16ebf-4823-4a12-afe1-5b40b2ad3725&DisplayLang=en)...I dont know about PDF.