"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.
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
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'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.
Of course, Office for OS X users have had PDF support for a while. It's inherent in the OS.
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.
Guess I'll have to read all this stuff later. Seems interesting enough and should lead to some heated discussion!
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.
Doesn't Adobe own the rights to the PDF format? I know that they give the reader away for free, but not the writing software.
Naw... ya think?
In the case of PDF though, it was a really simple straightforward problem. Currently, on our OfficeOnline site, we are seeing over 30,000 searches per week for PDF support. That makes a pretty easy decision :-)
Who does Brian Jones think he's kidding? That 30K hits per week didn't just start this week, did it? And yet nobody said anything about this at PDC or MVP. I'm sure that PDF has been a customer requirement for some time. Obviously, many people wanted this. And Brian makes the announcement on his blog?
Only now, when Microsoft really wants back on that approved vendor list, does it finally add the support. Maybe it'll work. Maybe they'll be off the hook for ODF support by tossing out the PDF bone.
Really innovative.
What is Microsoft up to, anyway, with its sudden plan to finally support PDF?
Actually, I'd like to know what Adobe is up to.
MS tried to get Adobe to allow Office to read PDFs in Office 97 and Adobe refused so, who's "finally" allowing who to do what?