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1. Comment - Adobe Preps Response to Microsoft XPS

   (Dec 13, 2006 - 11:07 AM)

   "Microsofts XAML on the other hand is what XML was supposed to be all along. A way of separating the data from the style so both are universally interchangeable and dynamically manipulatable."
   
   I'm glad you believe this. BTW, I have a lovely bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.
   
   Whenever you have content that is to be presented in multiple ways you have to choose whether the content drives the presentation or the presentation drives the content. There’s lots of middle ground but it’s full of compromises. HTML is on the “content drives presentation” end. This means that it is able to adapt the presentation to a variety of devices however the presentation tends to suffer. PDF is at the opposite end of the spectrum. The presentation is locked and the device adapts to the presentation (allowing you to zoom in and out but not rearranging the content). The presentation looks the same everywhere however.
   
   Both approaches have their place. PDF is what it is and is very good at what it does. The people who created your eBooks in PDF format probably weren’t intending that you should read them on a phone or PDA. IMO, it’s them you should be b****ing at.

2. Comment - Adobe Preps Response to Microsoft XPS

   (Dec 13, 2006 - 10:51 AM)

   "Adobe Preps Response to Microsoft XPS"
   
   Catchy headline, but it couldn't be more wrong. Adobe's been looking at this since long before MS announced XPS. See http://blogs.adobe.com/s...12/mission_to_mars.html
   
   Adobe understands that PDF being a proprietary format is a barrier to entry for people that want to make small changes to an existing PDF or extract specific information from a PDF. That’s why, in the past they’ve made toolkits to help people perform tasks such as merge data into a PDF and get data out of a PDF. These toolkits (like all new toolkits) have a learning curve, so while the barrier to entry is reduced, it is not removed.
   
   By now, everyone in IT knows that XML is the silver bullet to make all file formats interoperable. OK, maybe that’s overstating it a bit but it does lower the barrier to entry by allowing you to use your own tools to parse any file format in XML. All major languages have either built-in facilities or readily available libraries for reading and writing XML.
   
   With all due respect to Jim King and Chip Brown, it doesn't take a genius to put these two facts together and wonder whether a PDF format based on XML would make it an even more attractive technology to potential Adobe customers.
   
   Likewise, I’m sure MS didn’t sit down and say “Let’s kill PDF”. They had a need similar to the need PDF is addressing and they built a solution. When two solutions are trying to address similar needs it’s not unusual for the solutions to end up looking similar.
   
   Just because two solutions are similar doesn’t mean that one was built as a response to the other.