Posted on 10/05/2005 7:42:38 AM PDT by N3WBI3
Opinion: It's not coincidence that after Massachusetts made it clear that it would support open formats, Microsoft is now going to include PDF in the next version of Office.
What is Microsoft up to, anyway, with its sudden plan to finally support PDF?
It wasn't announced by Bill Gates loudly to the world at the Professional Developer Conference a few weeks ago. It also wasn't proclaimed to the Microsoft faithful at its recent Most Valuable Professional Global Summit.
No, instead, Microsoft quietly squeaked out the news on a Saturday afternoon in Microsoft Office Program Manager Brian Jones' Weblog.
Could it be that it's because Microsoft is backing its way into ever so reluctantly supporting an open format after Massachusetts decided that it would only use office suites that supported open formats like PDF and OpenDocument?
It certainly looks that way to me.
For all of its talk about being an innovator, Microsoft is really just a follower.
PointerClick here to read more about Microsoft's decision to build PDF support into Office 12.
Sometimes, of course, the company is a very, very reluctant follower. It took Microsoft's leadership forever to live down the fact that they had initially dismissed the Internet. Now, I see Microsoft slowly and painfully embracing open standards.
Mind you, this move is just a beginning. I recently pointed out that it would be trivial for Microsoft to add OpenDocument support to Office.
I don't see that happening anytime soon now though.
With PDF support alone, Microsoft can still try for Massachusetts government contracts without having to add OpenDocument.
Well, until StarOffice, OpenOffice.org and WordPerfect's support for OpenDocument force Microsoft's hand anyway.
After all, PDF is much more of an end-result format than one that most people actually want to edit in. As OpenDocument and the applications that enable it gain more support, Microsoft will find itself forced into supporting it too.
Now, some might say that this is just Microsoft giving the people what they want. Many users have been asking for a PDF option from Microsoft since Adobe Acrobat 4 appeared in 1999.
eWEEK Special Report: Office Politics
But, if that's all there was to it, then why was Microsoft banging the drum for its own PDF substitute, Metro, only a few months ago?
Still others might say that is part and parcel of Microsoft's recent efforts to compete against Adobe in other ways: Sparkle vs. Flash, Acrylic vs. Photoshop and so on.
To which, I say, "Why now? Why announce it in such a subdued way?"
No, all those other things play a role, but at the end of the day, Microsoft felt that it must make at least a concession to open standards by adopting PDF.
After all, it's not like Massachusetts is the only entity that is seriously considering making supporting open standards a requirement for its software purchases. Massachusetts was just the first to make it official.
Microsoft would love it if it could make everyone stick to its proprietary formats. That forces customers to keep buying its products. But it can't. And, much as Microsoft may hate it, its executives know it. So it is that as quietly as the company could, Microsoft is, once more, making concessions to open standards.
eWEEK.com Senior Editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has been using and writing about operating systems since the late '80s and thinks he may just have learned something about them along the way. He can be reached at sjvn@ziffdavis.com.
"For all of its talk about being an innovator, Microsoft is really just a follower."
Yeah, they just copy what the bigger, more popular companies do.
They take an awfully long time to render.
can you add me to your tech ping? thanks in advance.
I was just reading about a new browser called FLOCK. Has anyone tried it yet? http://biz.yahoo.com/bizwk/051005/tc20051052789_tc024.html?.v=1
Correction: They copy what the smaller, more innovative companies do.
And more often then not, patent it and run the smaller businesses out of business.
That could be a pretty time-consuming issue--and time is money.
> With PDF support alone, Microsoft can still try for
> Massachusetts government contracts without having
> to add OpenDocument.
Reportedly, that still won't qualify. PDF is essentially
a read-only format, and what MA wants is that electronic
documents be readable and modifiable at any time in the
future. Unless PDF has mutated, it loses the structure
and flow information of the original WP/DTP app.
By the way, how is this "new" Save-As .pdf from MS any
different from the PDF for Word plug-in that's been
available forever from Adobe?
MS wants to protect (and extend) their undocumented
document formats, and preserve their "diode effect" (you
can import other fmts into Word, but not export with
full capability). Those days are about to end.
I'm a refugee from the Peoples State of Taxachusetts,
and expect only horrors from there (like the Big Dig),
but what they've done here is a sensible thing, and it
really exposes the risks of storing your important
data in proprietary formats.
MS probably had been looking forward to subscription-
based licensing, where you'd have to keep paying them
even to open your .doc's in Word, followed eventually
by pay-per-save or even pay-per-read. Well, that train
is off the rails.
I have heard nothing from them as of yet.
That's not so much the problem. The real problem in a migration is the custom macros.
I'm wondering how good the save as PDF will be, and whether they'll actually write a PDF to specs. They're working on their own competitor in Vista called Metro, so it's in their interest to play their usual games, and maybe make Office PDFs (there will be millions floating around after 12 is released) bloated and broken so later they can show why Metro is better.
I just shut down the browser when I'm forced to open a .pdf. It is a uselessly slow and restrictive format.
> Standby for more on this, including a lot of FUD's
> from MS Marketing.
It's already spooling up to 104% of rated thrust.
Although a sideshow to the main purpose of the site,
groklaw has been following the MS-vs-MA soap opera.
Some recent stories:
Some Musty Old MS FUD Fails
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050930181153972
FOX's Anti-MASS FUD is a Dud - Updated
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050929134232923
Comments on the Massachusetts Decision
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050925165302314
It's Final - MA Goes With Open Document
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050923142231938
It appears that MS is trying to astro-turf this by using
employee blogs. Ain't workin'.
In the computer world, you either set standards or you
follow them. The age of the proprietary standard, that
no one else can follow, is passing. MS needs to figure
out how to live with that. There's still a lot of money
to be made, but not by shaking down your customers. MS
lost me as a customer years ago.
Get a new computer -- pdfs are pretty quick.
Of course, Office for OS X users have had PDF support for a while. It's inherent in the OS.
> I just shut down the browser when I'm forced to open a
> .pdf. It is a uselessly slow and restrictive format.
Using the PDF browser plug-in is slow and defeatured.
It also usually opens only one page at a time, making
document navigation tedious.
Right-click Save-As. If your browser (e.g. FireFox) pops
a download window, click [Open] when completed. The PDF
will open faster, and with full Reader (or full Acrobat)
capability.
Once we get a widely-supported XML document format,
PDF will no longer be essential for most documents.
But right now, everything else is NTSD (Never Twice
the Same Document). When I want to control page breaks,
image placement, text flow (even line breaks), I use PDF.
And anyone using OO from the alpha beta days forward..
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