Microsoft XPS and Office Open XML - So you think you know women...

So you think you know women....

After being married for almost 20 years you tell younger guys how you know about women. How they think, what they want and why they want it. Suddenly something comes along and you find your right back where you started. You don't really know women at all.

Enter Microsoft. Office 2007 products will ship all new file formats for Word, Excel and PowerPoint. These will be XML-based with open specifications. Open in the sense they will be well documented. The documents are freely available to the public and Microsoft will open grant rights to read and write the format royalty-free.

The XML makes sense and the openness comes from customer demand and the infamous State of Massachusetts requirements for open formats. OK fine. Are you still with me? I had thought this was the new "Metro" or XPS XML paper specification. But no. Office 2007 utilizes another XML format. The Office Open XML format. Not to be confused with the Open Document format for Office applications (Open Source and not from Microsoft). This will be the new default format for reading and writing Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Other Microsoft products will follow suit. You can still read and write the existing file formats and these can be changed to be the default by the individual users or can be installed as such. All products will be enabled to write and read the XPS format with a downloadable plug-in. A plug-in also exists to enable Office 2003 to use the new XPS formats.

Wait, its not over yet. Adobe is slated to be shipping a new XML based PDF format to replace the current PDF file format. This is supposed to be supported in the next version of Adobe Acrobat.

Where are we now? Where do we go from here. Why XPS? Why two formats and not roll all features into one format? As the head of engineering for Snowbound Software, who sells Imaging SDK, Imaging Toolkit, and Viewing Application products, I find myself at a loss for direction. What format would you implement and when to start?

To recap:

XPS - XML paper specification. Designed as a PDF competitor.
Office Open XML - New native file format for Office 2007. Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Open Document format for office applications - The document format for the open source Open Office suit of applications.
XML PDF - From Adobe to create an XML replacement for PDF.

So you think know women.............

** Note: in all fairness this could have been written so you think you know men...

-Jim

Comments

[Filiep Declercq]

Nice overview!
You say "A plug-in also exists to enable Office 2003 to use the new XPS formats."
Can Word 2003 read XPS formats with this plug-in?
Thanks

[James Palo]

In researching this I have found a plugin exists only to write the Xps format in Office 2007 only. You can view the Xps format with FireFox or Internet Explorer with a downloadable plugin. A stand alone viewer also exists from Microsoft. I was told at a Vista seminar that a plugin exists to read and write the Office Open XML format if using Office 2003. I have also seen this on the Microsoft web site.

[Chris]

If you have Vista, the reader is built into IE7 and the generator is built into the OS.

If you are on XP or Server 2003, you can install either the .NET Framework 3.0, or both the XPS Essentials Pack and MS Core XML Services 6 to enable support for XPS reading and generation.

Microsoft's page for that is here:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/viewxps.mspx