Bloody war ahead: MS wants Adobe PDF taken out...

[Calcatian]

When Bill Gates showed off the new Metro document format in Longhorn at a hardware conference last week, some analysts were quick to call it a PDF killer.

Indeed, there's plenty of overlap between Adobe's popular Portable Document Format and what Microsoft is planning to include in the next version of Windows. Metro is designed to do things PDF already does, namely to allow for the creation of files that can be printed, viewed or archived without needing the program that created them.

It's that omnipresence, analysts say, that Microsoft covets, laying the groundwork for a significant battle between the two formats.

Details here...

[Calcatian]

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Adobe digests Microsoft move

Investors and analysts were divided Wednesday over how Microsoft's new XDocs electronic-forms software would affect Adobe Systems, which has identified online forms as a significant new business direction.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Wednesday unveiled XDocs, corporate software for harvesting and sharing data submitted through online forms.

Although Adobe is mainly known for working with static, read-only documents through its PDF format, the company is trying to expand into dynamic online forms. Earlier this year, Adobe acquired Accelio, a Canadian software maker specializing in server products that capture, store and process data submitted through electronic forms..