> I haven't had the time to look into it, but I have been told that XPS > includes some MS proprietary components. IF this is true, the open > source community and printer manufacturers won't be able to fully > support XPS without a license for the proprietary technologies.
If that is the case then so much for it being "open" - oh I was forgetting it's Microsoft! But they think it will be 'open', see blog http://blogs.msdn.com/andy_simonds/archive/2005/10/17/482135.aspx from late last year. Thanks for your thoughts everyone Only time will tell who wins out XPS or PDF, I personally wouldn't put any money on the latter. But maybe they could happily co-exist. Paul Norm Jacobs <Norm.Jacobs at Sun.COM> on Wed, 26 Apr 2006 wrote: > gheet <Ghee.Teo at Sun.COM> wrote: >> Paul Cunningham <paulcun at talk21.com> wrote: >> >>> >>> So for what it's worth here is my take on XPS .... >>> >>> XPS will be part of MS Windows Vista (and back ported to XP) when it is >>> released later this year (or whenever). This will probably make XPS >>> become the defacto standard for portable documents within a number of >>> years replacing PDF, ie. lots of windows PCs means lots of XPS document >>> files. >> >> >> >> That's a interesting view. But I don't see many people distribute >> file s in PDF format these days, unless they only want to distribute a >> read-only version. If MS is sticking to this format, this probably >> they will have to wait till w2k is phased out (unless it is ported >> also to it), I don't think this will win over PDF. > > > I would have to agree that it won't necessarily win out over PDF, but it > will clearly become an important format to support as Microsoft pushes > it forward. > >> >> So, sooner rather than later, Solaris/OpenSolaris/Linux/etc will >> >>> need a XPS viewer and method of printing XPS document files. In the >>> longer term application will probably also need to be able to create XPS >>> document files. >>> >>> From the Solaris Printing System point of view, it probably means that >>> it needs to handle XPS formatted files. Solaris 9 & 10 currently use >>> 'a2ps' (via foomatic-rip) to convert files to the required printer PDL. >>> So I guess Solaris will wait until the opensource community has updated >>> 'a2ps' to be able handle XPS before the printing system can handle it. >> >> >> >> This will be the ideal. > > > Yes, It's likely that we will want to wait and incorporate a filter that > handles XPS for us. > >>> >>> In the future, if companies like Global Graphics have their way, some >>> printers will have XPS as their inbuilt PDL. So the Solaris Printing >>> System will have to be able to convert other file formats to XPS to be >>> able to print to these XPS printers. Personally I don't think that this >>> is likely to happen in a big way though (but I may be wrong). >> >> >> >> Yeah. Even if it can do it, it still want to be backward >> compatible. so that can only mean more capabilities on the printers, >> but still the older format will need to be supported for a while. >> > At this point, I am less concerned about supporting printers with XPS at > their only built-in PDL, though that could change. Even now, printer > vendors are just starting to *add* support for PDF in their devices. > > I haven't had the time to look into it, but I have been told that XPS > includes some MS proprietary components. IF this is true, the open > source community and printer manufacturers won't be able to fully > support XPS without a license for the proprietary technologies. > > -Norm > >
