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.
I loved the Democrat-like fake grassroots movement petitioning MA not to go with open formats.
I agree with lormand. They are slow. Especially in a browser. That is if they don't lockup.
What should I get, a new CRAY?
If you want PFDs to come up fast, don't run any other processes, AND have a huge stick of memory. PDFs are memory hogs, and the user my wait for the PDF to acknowledge every person in the world as it launches.
> I'm wondering how good the save as PDF will be,
> and whether they'll actually write a PDF to specs.
Don't be terribly surprised if the "MS" PDF exporter is
merely a licensed version of the existing Adobe plug-in.
It is common for MS to "innovate" this way (when they
don't outright steal it, as in Stac v. Microsoft).
PDF is an open spec, so MS could code it, but that takes
effort, skill and time, and MS may not have time. When it
appears, check the Help>About and see if any Adobe (c)s
are listed.
PDFs open fine on my old AMD 1333 with 512MB, and a bit slower on an old laptop, but then everything is slow on that thing. However, check to see if you have Acrobat 6 installed -- it was a bit buggy.
The Word conversion is already pretty clean. The only thing I've had issues with is the conversion of numbered headings & outlines.
The question is how can Microsoft adapt to open standards while maintaining the integrity of existing multi-year contracts for those that licensed their proprietary APIs, protocols, and document formats? For example, joeDev licensed the use of a proprietary file format and is paying US$xyz (which may be a royalty) for use in his product. Can Microsoft legally provide the file format as an open standard, or would they be locked in to maintaining the existing licenses? I am not supporting Microsoft here, just asking a general question.
Well, if this plays out like the whole Java thing, or even http html for that matter, Microsoft's plan will be to support pdf... but then "enhance" it in ways that only work w/ windows. In other words, don't attack head on, pretend to go along and then gradually corrupt it from inside.
MIcrosfot lost the java thing and the PDF license is pretty clear. You are perfectly free to impliment PDF but you can not! extend it.
PDFs aren't quick. PDF is a horribly inefficient format, the only thing that makes PDFs seem nice is the format is less inefficient than Word. But when you get right down to it the only things PDF has going for it are being able to distribute almost entirely uneditable documents and being better than Word.
The real thing PDF has going for it is moving around *exact* copies of documents. Granted this could be done by tiff or another image format but PDF does it better than those. So if you scan something in for evidence, or historical purposes nobody can turn around and say something has altered.
I use it to make an electronic copy of students papers before grading them and handing them back.
Guess I'll have to read all this stuff later. Seems interesting enough and should lead to some heated discussion!
Damn commies!
Wonderful. J++ all over again.
What...with voting and Microsoft PR campaigns...the dead have a very active lifestyle these days. :)
According to Adobe, you can extend it, but then you lose the right to associate it with the PDF and Acrobat trademarks. However, Microsoft had a similar agreement with Sun over Java and still broke it.
Answer: No, Microsoft is just continuing to support industry standard formats such as their own and the longtime Adobe format, just as any huge company trying to satisfy a huge customer base would do. The free software freaks hate this, of course, simply because Microsoft didn't give all their applications and code away to the entire world, immediately, for free. Nothing else will of course ever be accepted.
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