Partager via

Adbobe Picks a File-Format Fight

  • Article

The last two weeks have seen a big increase in the amount of press coverage and blog discussions of file-format issues. Working draft 1.3 of the Open XML spec is out, Office 2007 Beta 2 was released, and now Adobe is threatening legal action regarding Office's built-in support for the PDF and XPS formats.

My colleague Don Campbell forwarded me some information about the Wall Street Journal piece that broke the story this morning, but if you're not an WSJ subscriber you can also read the story in an article on Cnet now.

Brian Jones's blog covers the basics of what's going on regarding Office and PDF, and there has already been quite a bit of heated discussion in the hours since Brian posted his perspective this morning.

Bottom line, Office 2007 is ship without the "save as PDF" and "save as XPS" options (which we've all seen in the beta versions). Instead, those will be available as separate free downloads, which is much less convenient for the customer. And that's still not enough for Adobe, it seems: they want Microsoft to charge for PDF support, otherwise they're threatening legal action. Microsoft has even offered to ship Flash and Shockwave with every copy of Vista worldwide, and that's not enough to satisfy Adobe's lawyers.

PDF is a strange bird. It's a so-called "open standard," but Adobe retains control over who can use it and what they can do with it. Ironically, this threatened/rumored lawsuit could do more to limit PDF's future than anything Microsoft could or would do. And when you look at the downright incestuous relationship between PDF and the Mac, as well as the built-in PDF support in products from Corel, Sun and others, it's a bit hard to take the current posturing seriously.

Here are a few more blogs with more information and perspective on this issue:

Stay tuned, this is an issue that will likely grow much larger soon. Users want the simplicity of being able to publish documents in fixed digital form directly from the software they use to create those documents, and nothing Adobe (or Microsoft) does will change that. Another thing Adobe can't do much to change: more PDF documents are created in Microsoft Word than in any other software.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    June 02, 2006
    Nice write-up Doug.  Thanks for covering this story so well.
  • Anonymous
    June 02, 2006
    This is the first I've heard that the "Publish as XPS" option is being removed from the shipping product as well!!!

    As XPS is YOUR format, how can they force you to remove that as well?? It just doesn't make any sense.

    Then again, lawyers seldom do.
  • Anonymous
    June 02, 2006
    I don't understand it either, Brad.  I'm guessing that maybe the XPS option was removed simply as a concession during negotiations or something, but I'm not privvy to any of the details so that's just a guess.
  • Anonymous
    June 03, 2006
    Now that all of this has happened, those of us testing office in the corporate environments are going to need to be able to download these "add-ins" or whatever they get called when the Beta2-TR comes out, and any subsequent testable versions (RC1 or whatever) so that we can bug against them and make sure that they are solid. If they aren't available for download during the testing period, they are likely to fail to get enough testing and end up shipping with too many unresolved issues. Can "Office 2007 Technical Evangelist" work both ways? In other words, can you pass the word to the right people for me that we will still need access to the download during the testing period post Beta2? Thanks!
  • Anonymous
    June 03, 2006
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    June 05, 2006
    If you haven't heard about the whole Adobe nonsense lately, you should. Adobe is really doing a good...
  • Anonymous
    June 19, 2009
    PingBack from http://debtsolutionsnow.info/story.php?id=12008