Office 2007 and Acrobat
Don't know how many of you have seen this.
Microsoft stated a while back that Office 2007 would have native support for Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files. That is, you could select "File|Save As" in Word, and save your document directly to PDF.
Well, despite the fact that Apple and OpenOffice both have this functionality, Adobe have decided to sue Microsoft over this decision and disallow them including Save as PDF as a feature in Office 2007.
Good work Adobe, you tools. Talk about fairness in the market!
Read all about it on Brian Jones's blog. He's one of the main guys behind the open XML formats in Office 2007.
Comments
# crucible
5/06/2006 10:32 AM
The thing that I find really interesting about this is that the pdf is supposedly an open format, so shouldn't anyone be able to implement it without any issues like this?
I think someone mentioned MS might have wanted to modify it slightly in some way, which would be an issue - but to directly implement an open document format... I don't see where the problem lies or why Adobe can just go ahead and say no to them.
Especially given that it has given Microsoft's competitors free reign over implementing pdfs in their software.
It's one to watch play out.. maybe it's because Microsoft does charge for Office?
# mabster
5/06/2006 10:37 AM
I think it's just because Adobe are tools.
Adobe actually wanted MS to charge *more* for Office if they were to include the PDF support!
This sort of thing is the stuff you'd have expected from MS five or ten years ago. Funny how times have changed. Nowadays MS are submitting XML standards to open standards bodies and its companies like Adode trying to protect their monopolies.
# crucible
5/06/2006 1:06 PM
Lets be fair here, Microsoft aren't totally doing it out of the kindness of their hearts.
It was lead by a group of US states bringing into place local laws that government departments can only use products that save in open formats.
So basically, from what I gather, Microsoft brought about their views to protect Office even being used within government departments in the future.
That said, I think it's kinda insane to say someone can't use Microsoft Word in an organisation because lets face it, it's a standard and if you want to interact with any other company then Word is one of the most important utilities.
But as it stands, Microsoft have done more and more to be open, transparent and more - part of the community in IT-Land.
You know yourself, the openness and tools that Microsoft is now providing - as well as all the information we get pre-release just makes us love em all the more, and they're doing great things for their image.
Now if only we could get the "M$" hating tools out of the way, then the world would be a better place.
But yeah, I wouldn't look into Microsofts motives too closely about why they are going down this path, just say we appreciate it and its definately the right track...
Now how long before we can convince the boss to get us Vista, new PCs and Office 2007?
By the way, if you noticed, apparently Microsoft can give away a plug-in after release for free, but they can't give it away in the product - now that is insane.
I guess that'd be first thing in the auto-update pack. But yeah, why, why, why?
It's a very toolish thing to do.
# Dave Burke
6/06/2006 12:34 AM
You were right the first time, Mabster Man. They're a bunch of tools! :-)
# mabster
6/06/2006 7:08 AM
HAHA! Vindication!!!