War and PDF: Microsoft submits XPS to standards body

Microsoft has announced that it has chartered a new Technical Committee to submit a new standard to the standards-setting body Ecma International. The would-be standard involves "creating an XML-based electronic paper format and page description language that is consistent with existing implementations of Microsoft's XML Paper Specification (XPS)." The group, which goes by the catchy name of Technical Committee 46, will convene next month.

The move represents the latest salvo in an ongoing skirmish between Adobe and Microsoft over the future of electronic document standards. Adobe, of course, wants PDF to remain the dominant format for exchanging document information over the web and is even considering suing Microsoft over its efforts to establish XPS as a new standard by bundling an XPS document writer with Windows Vista (and Office 2007). Adobe has also submitted the PDF format for approval as an ISO standard, although only certain subsets (PDF/A and PDF/X, among others) are being considered for ISO certification.

Microsoft, for their part, acknowledge that PDF is the de facto standard at the moment, and the Office team even tried to include a "Save as PDF" feature in Office 2007 in response to strong customer demand for such functionality. Adobe reacted negatively to this move and forced Microsoft to remove this feature from the default Office 2007 distribution (it is still, however, available as a free download from Microsoft).

The reaction from the open-source community to the XML Paper announcement has been one of disappointment. Attorney Andrew Updegrove, who represents high-tech firms and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Linux Foundation, wrote on his blog that the move "seems wholly incompatible with the role of a global standards body." Updegrove is a strong supporter of formats such as OpenDocument, the format used by OpenOffice.org, which became an ISO standard last December. His view of Microsoft's submission of their own standards to ECMA and ISO is somewhat gloomy. "If OOXML, and now Microsoft XML Paper Specification, each sail through ECMA and are then adopted by ISO/IEC JTC1," he writes, "then I think that we might as well declare 'game over' for open standards."

Despite Updegrove's reservations, the outcome of this "standards war" is unlikely to affect the public in any significant way. Both Adobe and Microsoft are powerful software titans who wish to preserve their respective market positions. The Office 2007 example suggests that Adobe is willing to sacrifice openness to preserve its market position.

PDF didn't become the de facto standard by being open in any case; it was the free availability of the Acrobat Reader combined with the innate utility of the software and lack of viable competitors that caused PDF to dominate the Internet landscape. Having both PDF and XPS confirmed as standards by the ECMA and/or ISO will mean that it will be up to computer users to decide which format is more useful to their needs. Microsoft will surely have a tough time trying to supplant the ubiquitous PDF, which currently enjoys robust support on many different platforms.