Microsoft Seeks XPS Standardisation
Microsoft Seeks XPS Standardisation
July 3, 2007: The ongoing stoush between Microsoft and Adobe over the PDF format took another turn this week, with Microsoft announcing that it is submitting a proposal for a new “XML-based electronic paper format and page description language” standard to the international standards body Ecma.
If successful, establishing the standard will be a major coup for Microsoft, putting significant weight behind its XML Paper Specification (XPS) format as the future for electronic documents. Adobe is having none of this, obviously preferring its own format to remain the favourite is has submitted PDF for ISO standard approval.
The two have been grappling over their respective formats for a while now, with the most recent landmarks in the struggle being Microsoft’s bundling of its XPS writer with Office 2007 and Vista, while simultaneously being forced to remove PDF writing support from Office 2007 after Adobe complained about its inclusion.
At first it appears that Microsoft is simply responding to Adobe’s measures to protect its market share, however, the issue goes much deeper than this.
Writing on his Gesmer Updegrove LLP law firm blog, Andrew Updegrove, a technology Attorney and a member of the Board of Directors of the Linux Foundation, says that despite the benefits a single standard offers for vendors and end users, single standards such as OpenXML will “encourage other vendors to push for multiple, unnecessary standards rather than achieving consensus on a single standard that will best serve the needs of all stakeholders, and not individual proprietary vendors.
“Perpetuating one monopolistic market position after another seems wholly incompatible with the role of a global standards body, tasked with protecting the interests of all stakeholders,” writes Updegrove.
“I believe that it would turn the ISO/IEC process into a sham to consistently allow proprietary vendors to present their products, not as examples to be used for the creation of directly competing products (as was the case with Sun's submission of the specification for StarOffice as the starting point for the creation of ODF) but as the off-limits product around which an interface can be standardised.”
Whether it becomes a standard or not though, Microsoft faces a hefty uphill battle to gain ground over Adobe’s popular and widespread format, particularly considering PDF is available on many other platforms.
Comment on this story