Vista & Office 2007 features for the chop

found this article on WindowsITPro's website

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With Adobe Systems threatening a lawsuit over a new feature in Microsoft Office 2007 that would have allowed users to save any document in Adobe’s PDF format, Microsoft now says it will simply drop the feature. But Office 2007 isn't the only major Microsoft product to shed its features in recent weeks. The company recently revealed it would also drop an eagerly anticipated feature from Windows Vista and downplay another previously hyped feature.

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Full Article

good find Gatt

but to be honest i i hate PDF files. they are slow you cant edit them and generally the only thing there good for is for manuals and that sort of thing.

hehe,
people wanting pdf export will still have to use openoffice :)
interesting read, XPS looks like just another pointless m$ format, but still, might be interesting, wonder if anyone has created an open-source viewer for it yet, i guess not until a version is released so people can get their hands on some files to try and view :)

does make it wonder through if it was xps format adobe where fighting would they drop is as fast.

so why can openoffice save to pdf but not ms?

Russ

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Originally Posted by russdev

so why can openoffice save to pdf but not ms?

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Because MS have the monopoly.

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i hate PDF files. they are slow you cant edit them and generally the only thing there good for is for manuals and that sort of thing.

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could always find a faster reader, there are enough around. - I even have one on a GP2X ! (but that really is slow).
Kword can import pdf's for editing and I guess its easy enough to edit them by converting to GS - which Scribus can import. Commercial acrobat can also edit them. And yes, they are pretty good for manuals.

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russdev wrote:
so why can openoffice save to pdf but not ms?

Because MS have the monopoly.

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I always assumed it was licensing, you could write to pdf as long as it was a free product, otherwise you must pay adobe. I might be wrong, but there are lots of free apps that can save pdf (scribus,OOo,Koffice,Xfig,printers) but not many commercial ones.

Nope, sorry, this is all FUD by MS surrounding the PDF feature. This is what the Wall Street Journal (where the original story surfaced) actually wrote.

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Microsoft Corp. said it expected Adobe Systems Inc. to file an antitrust suit in Europe after talks to use Adobe's technology broke down this week

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What I think is really going on here is Microsoft want to release a "superior format" (XPS?), lock people into it and shift blame to Adobe.

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Because MS have the monopoly.

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The only thing that springs to mind here is that Microsoft would be improperly leveraging it's monopoly position to force a competitor (Adobe) out of business. Assuming you can show that MS has a monopoly in the office suite area.

I also hear they are trying to do the same by 'combining' jpg and png files into a MS only picture file. What with OpenXML (patent ridden, only writable by MS office etc) and the PDF thing it sounds like full scale war file formats - looks like OSS is the way to go w.r.t Bectas specifications.

How stupid, just let them use PDF in it as its a feature that we would love to have. We will still use Adobe PDF creator in certain areas, but to be able to make PDFs straight from Office is brill and its out of the box so no 3rd party solution needed. Strikes me as if its a stupid idea.