Adobe Goes to Mars
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NASA may be talking about a moon base in the 2020s, but Adobe has its sights set sooner on Mars. |
Over the weekend, I took a quick look at Adobe's Mars Project, which went into beta last week. In many ways, Mars is a response to Microsoft's XPS (XML Paper Specification), which directly competes with Adobe's PDF (Portable Document Format) and also PostScript.
As if enterprises don't have enough format troubles--Open Document, Microsoft's Open XML, Office 97-2003, XML and so on--to deal with. Now, Adobe adds Mars to the format confusion (so much for the promise of XML, when vendors vie to preserve their legacy stuff).
Adobe's competitive response to XPS makes sense. PDF's heritage predates the populist Web, and Adobe created the format for the purpose of mimicking paper documents. In the 21st century, however, digital documents are often containers that likely will never be printed. Paper's relevance--and so the need to mimic--has greatly diminished.
XPS and WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere) are part of Microsoft's go-digital strategy. One of Microsoft's design goals for Office 2003 and 2007 is digitization--that documents are digitally created and remain so; they never need to be printed. Microsoft has characterized XPS in part as a printing technology, but that's more for marketing, jockeying against PDF and mollifying some larger customers psychologically bound to printing.
With Mars, Adobe is creating "XML-based representation of PDF documents." While Acrobat already supports XML workflows, Mars takes PDF further. The technology is clearly designed for enterprise workflows, with improved indexing and metadata capabilities over what Adobe currently offers with PDF. Mars also better supports vector-based graphics formats than does PDF. Like Open XML and XPS, the format's disparate pieces can be separated as a ZIP file. One purpose: to make easier extraction of the raw XML.
"The Mars Project was initiated to explore how XML and similar open standards could be used in ways that enable more developers to better integrate a PDF into existing and future applications and solutions," according to Adobe's Mars Web site.
Mars comes out of Adobe Labs, which is a makeover of Marcomedia Labs. The Labs is one of the best, unsung assets of Adobe's Macromedia acquisition. Adobe is reaching a different developer community than before the acquisition. This year, Adobe Labs has released some intriguing incubation projects, such as Flash Lite, Lightroom, Soundbooth and, now, Mars.
Comments (8)
PDF is now dead anyway. The reason I have personally dumped PDF is the reader is bloated and the professional distiller is now installing NT services I have no control over in the form of Macrovision activation DRM. Instaling Acrobat Professional 8 means you no longer have control over some of your services. It is viral, if you remove it and disable it, it gets reinstalled and reactivates. I do not wish Adobe to manage my desktop, I do that myself thank you very much.
I am using XPS in future now because it is faster and has no activation requirements and due to the API's there will be more tools than you can imagine than the PDF hacks.
OpenOffice should never have had an "export" feature as the document formats belong at the printer level so all appliations can use them for writing.
Adobe knows PDF is dying fast.
Posted by dsfds | December 11, 2006 1:15 PM
Joe why do you keep using "legitimate" Headlines for your articles that do NOT have anything to do with what you are writing about !
First you start off about NASA going to the moon and then right off that subject go on to "Adobe" Mars !
You really how to put the bait out don't you !
Oh ! and by the way "Marcomedia Labs" is spelt "Macromedia Labs" actually !
All your articles show that they are not checked over by someone ...like an editor !
Posted by Neil | December 11, 2006 6:44 PM
Typo error
"You really know how to put the bait out don't you !"
I just thought Joe ... maybe I am "Nitpicking" !
Like one of your articles.
Posted by Neil | December 11, 2006 6:50 PM
XPS is free and the fonts are wonderfully anti-aliased.
Posted by someone | December 12, 2006 1:59 AM
Joe,
Actually XPS is going to be a big printing improvement. Wait and see.
Posted by cg | December 12, 2006 4:08 PM
I agree with Neil: I enjoy puns, but not when they're taken to the point of being misleading. Either the title or summary should have some bearing on the actual story, if not both. If you're not witty enough to fit the joke in just one place, you certainly shouldn't make it span both.
The problem is that the title and summary of this article only make sense to someone already familiar with the project, in which case there's very little point reading the story. Since neither title nor subject is in context, my time is wasted before I can even determine whether the story interests me.
If Microsoft Watch continues to waste people's time, its readership will decrease further. It's not rocket science.
Posted by James | December 13, 2006 10:04 AM
You know I kinda came here looking for information on space exploration. But I do appreciate the information on added things Adobe cannibalized in their acquisition of Macromedia.
Posted by Mitomjo | April 11, 2007 12:56 PM
You know I kinda came here looking for information on space exploration. But I do appreciate the information on added things Adobe cannibalized in their acquisition of Macromedia.
Posted by Mitomjo | April 11, 2007 12:57 PM