Microsoft Metro vs .pdf
p2pnet.net News:- Is Bill Gates lusting after Adobe’s position in the document format world?
Adobe’s .pdf is loathed by a lot of people but nonetheless, it’s a popular way of building documents and comes with its own real and virtual DRM.
Don’t try to break a text version out of a .pdf document if you’re in a hurry.
“Perhaps the most talked-about technology at Microsoft’s annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference last week was a new file format, code-named Metro, that could move the company into the market for electronic paper,” says InformationWeek.
Metro is a combination file format, document viewer, and page description language that can, “print graphics-packed files with higher fidelity than Windows can today. It’s reliant on technology called Avalon that will ship with Longhorn,” says the story.
“Microsoft last week released a technical specification for Metro and plans to license the technology, based on XML, at no charge.”
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<——Save a tree. Disband an ISO working group today / Jason Zions ——->
See:-
InformationWeek – Microsoft’s Metro Aims To Be PDF Replacement, May 2, 2005
May 2nd, 2005 at 2:59 pm
âMicrosoft last week released a technical specification for Metro and plans to license the technology, based on XML, at no charge.â
this follows what they promised the world when they patented docs using XML…unfortunately this promise – once their standard is prolific – could easily be reversed, would you trust Microsoft?
TT
reference,
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050315230914533&query=xml+patent
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050309212143216&query=xml+patent
May 3rd, 2005 at 12:38 am
As a Graphic Artist the PDF format is already a big-enough headache.
Trying to acheive portability of any document from the Office suite (particularly in the XP environment) is Hell On Earth – poor character shapes and H&Js, range kerning blown to shit – are all a result of Microsoft’s lack of support of basic type languages and formats, which is to say: very poor implimentation of “full support” for Open Type and Post Script.
Why the hell make it more abominable by letting a new ’standard’ from Bill run riot?
Longhorn’s development should be focusing on pulling in Window’s head – not trying to chock it full of new features that are poorly implimented, and probably just won’t work for end users, or people who aren’t willing to invest time and learning into making things just work.
May 3rd, 2005 at 5:56 am
“As a Graphic Artist the PDF format is already a big-enough headache. ”
lol, are you kidding, perhaps you’re inept with the distiller, but the workflow to the printer has been minimized and file size reduced with the wide-spread acceptance of the PDF, not to mention less CDs burned to transfer collected output…..really here maybe this will help you (no offense intended, just trying to help)
http://busca.adobe.com/search?site=AdobeCom&client=AdobeCom&filter=0&output=xml_no_dtd&requiredfields=&getfields=&proxystylesheet=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.adobe.com%2Fspecial%2Fsearch%2Fadobecom.xsl&restrict=Adobe_com&q=create+pdf&x=0&y=0
http://busca.adobe.com/search?site=AdobeCom&client=AdobeCom&filter=0&output=xml_no_dtd&requiredfields=&getfields=&proxystylesheet=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.adobe.com%2Fspecial%2Fsearch%2Fadobecom.xsl&restrict=Adobe_com&q=pdf+workflow&x=0&y=0
May 3rd, 2005 at 6:20 am
Hey dun be to hard on him, he probably just uses the auto PDF maker and doesn’t know about the distiller. Selest the the distiller from the print options and not the auto export.
hth
May 3rd, 2005 at 6:42 am
Or more realistically – don’t create anything but a raw Postscript files before taking them to distiller.
But thats a bit of a problem for the Office suite, for instance, isn’t it? Distiller has to handle the information directly.
Then try and condense a Word file into a PDF/X1a compliant file, juggling RGB incompatabilities and the virtually unavoiadable TrueType Arial that comes with windows and, no, I am not sorry to say: I just want to kill myself.
I have postscript errors that only reveal themselves when being fed to a platemaker, or negs. The PostScript III Fiery I output digital work to has equal nightmares handling some of the buggy PostScript that Office apps bounce to distiller, too.
Oddly enough, running the same files back through Professional 6 on my Macintosh, with font substitution available then re-ripping does the trick. Faultless output, or error messages that actually refer to the original file.
My initial point, however, was that Window’s can’t handle quality, professional press print-applications for the life of it. Microsoft need to make their OS more fluent with current print-standards before they start introducing a slew of their own, newer (and sorry to be pessimistic, buggier) standards.