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Author Topic: Microsoft trying to bump off Acrobat  (Read 2471 times)

Offline gunug

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Microsoft trying to bump off Acrobat
« on: October 17, 2006, 08:46:23 AM »
QUOTE
Enter Microsoft. The company has been toiling away on its own "portable" document technology for some time and plans to make a splash with it in 2007. Dubbed the XML Paper Specification (or more succinctly, XPS), Microsoft plans support for the new format in both Windows Vista and Office 2007. In response, Adobe went to EU regulators earlier this year to ask that they bar Microsoft from including XPS support in Windows Vista, fearing that the ability to create XPS documents "for free" could cut into their ability to sell PDF creation software to Windows users.


http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061015-7992.html
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Offline Xairbusdriver

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Microsoft trying to bump off Acrobat
« Reply #1 on: October 17, 2006, 09:58:46 AM »
I submit that M$ is not the first but only the biggest comapny to support XML standards for documents. Seems about time that Adobe is challenged, IMHO. XML has so much to recommend it and it is already widely used even by Apple ( most .plist files are pure XML ), it might even lead to more and better support for web page standards! smile.gif

Maybe companies can now concentrate on making more apps easy to use and useful instead of wasting time and resources on being able to read/write ".doc" files. wallbash.gif
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Offline gunug

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Microsoft trying to bump off Acrobat
« Reply #2 on: October 17, 2006, 10:24:42 AM »
I think a lot of us have a love/hate relationship with Acrobat and PDF files.  I probably wouldn't like them near as well if the capability wasn't built into OS X; I even hunted out a program that provides a PDF printer driver in Windows XP.  I certainly wouldn't pay what Acrobat costs to be able to do PDF files!  I will admit that Photoshop is a great package; I haven't had much of a chance to try the newer Creative Suite but I understand that it's an improvement in a lot of ways!
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Offline Xairbusdriver

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Microsoft trying to bump off Acrobat
« Reply #3 on: October 17, 2006, 11:50:27 AM »
I think we may be describing at least three different 'technologies' here: PostScript ( the printing part ), PDF ( the creating/transfer/display part ), and PhotoShop ( the image creating/editing part ). While all are Adobe products, the first two are mainly licensed to third-parties for use in printers or OSs. I don't think PhotoShop ( or Elements ) has anything directly to do with them ). And each has competitors in their specialty area. Competition is usually good unless it results in the loss of some of the competitors, IMHO. This is the main complaint I have against Apple, of course! but so far, the Apple monopoly has provided the best in its area of technology, again, IMHO. OTOH we don't really know what would be around today if Apple had allowed the clones to continue. stop.gif Please don't let these words start a flame war on what Apple did and didn't do! nono.gif smile.gif
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Offline Gregg

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Microsoft trying to bump off Acrobat
« Reply #4 on: October 17, 2006, 12:25:37 PM »
I can't stand it when people send Word or Excel documents and just assume the rest of the world loves them. rant.gif complain.gif

So, I've got no problem with .pdf files. smile.gif
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Offline dboh

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Microsoft trying to bump off Acrobat
« Reply #5 on: October 17, 2006, 02:05:52 PM »
QUOTE(gunug @ Oct 17 2006, 11:24 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
…but I understand that it's an improvement in a lot of ways!


For me, it's worth the money that Acrobat (Professional) can now preflight files and do stuff like converting RGB to CMYK, or either of those to grayscale. I can now do things with client files that I couldn't do before. (I used to have to return the files and ask clients to redo them; even though it wasn't my fault they hadn't complied with printed standards, they were still unhappy.)
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Offline Xairbusdriver

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Microsoft trying to bump off Acrobat
« Reply #6 on: October 17, 2006, 02:13:59 PM »
For Word, Excel and Powerpoint files, all you need for viewing are <icWord> and <icExcel>. They work all the way back to OS 7.1 which, I believe, covers your OS of choice! harhar.gif Some features may not be available without X, however...

When possible, convert thes things to AppleWorks or MacWrite and send them back telling the original author that you especially liked a particular portion of the file and you've made a few edits/notes they might want to consider. rolleyes.gif Of course, you should also change/add ".doc" on the end, just to give them some fun...
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Offline Gregg

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Microsoft trying to bump off Acrobat
« Reply #7 on: October 18, 2006, 07:45:08 AM »
Oh I can view them, and cut and paste to SimpleText or AppleWorks. I just don't like the arrogance of assuming it's ok to send files in a proprietary format. For business to business, it's fine if you know the other party has the sofware. But, we usually do pdf's anyway because of security issues.
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Offline Xairbusdriver

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Microsoft trying to bump off Acrobat
« Reply #8 on: October 18, 2006, 10:05:05 AM »
Although I have a very limited range of experience in the business world, my suspition is that most people really thing that bold, underlining, italics, etc. make their epistles sooo much more interesting and readable. They, therefore, spend countless hours and electrons making sure that others see their great computer skills, never dreaming that all that stuff can be lost without detering the expression of the ideas. I contend that MS encourages many to try these methods just because they can. Meanwhile, plain text goes begging and ideas are slowed down by incompatibilities between OSs and software. This becomes palinfully obvious in email, where Leopard promises to make it impossible for non-html capable email progams to 'see' stuff that will be coming from future Mac users. To wit: Mail will have features similar to Pages that will make extremely complex ( by messaging standards ) emails that will look great on the senders Mac but will end up with message sizes ranging into the several thousands of bytes for what might take only a few hundred in plain text. Of course, if you have/leave html rendering ON, you are then still vulnerable to the documented abuses/dangers caused by that. But what does Apple care! Substance is secondary to Style, in many instances. rant.gif

Well, I feel better! smile.gif
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Offline D76

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Microsoft trying to bump off Acrobat
« Reply #9 on: October 18, 2006, 10:49:28 AM »
QUOTE(airbusdriver @ Oct 18 2006, 11:05 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
. . . .Leopard promises to make it impossible for non-html capable email progams to 'see' stuff that will be coming from future Mac users.
Anyone who sends multi-megabyte "template" emails full of html dreck deserves his fate.

Off with his header!
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Offline krissel

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Microsoft trying to bump off Acrobat
« Reply #10 on: October 18, 2006, 11:52:36 PM »
QUOTE(D76 @ Oct 18 2006, 11:49 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Off with his header!




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Offline Xairbusdriver

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Microsoft trying to bump off Acrobat
« Reply #11 on: October 19, 2006, 02:57:08 PM »
The new Mail looks like it has inherited some of the bad habits of iWeb; byte gobbling image creations so one can have images with reflections on the 'table, rotated images, text converted to images, etc. Seems to be feeding the "Wow! Look at all the fonts and styles on my new 128K Mac!" crowd. smile.gif It was bad for 'desktop publishing 20 years ago, maybe it will be better than I fear this time. dntknw.gif Hopefully, there will still be a text version of these messages.
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