Office 12 to Include Native PDF Support

parry writes "Microsoft announced today at the MVP summit that Office 12, the next version of Microsoft Office, will have native support for the PDF document format. Support will be built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, OneNote, Visio, and InfoPath." From the article: "Currently, on our OfficeOnline site, we are seeing over 30,000 searches per week for PDF support. That makes a pretty easy decision"

Open Document?

[exnuke (734919)]

So we just need to go search for Open Document?

Re:So... Let me get this straight...

[commodoresloat (172735)]

Sooner or later this sort of hypocrisy is going to catch up to them and their business practices. No doubt there are legal interpretations of this that will eventually have to be answered as well.

Yeah for sure! Remember in the late 1990s there was a company doing things like this, and the Justice Department went after them. We got a full ruling on the facts from a federal judge detailing count after count of monopolistic practices. The Justice Department really put that company in its place for breaking the law. What was that company called again? Oh, wait a minute...

How "native"? Importing too?

[codergeek42 (792304)]

Does this mean it will have PDF-import capabilities too? Or is this just export-only? It says on the article that it can publish to PDF. Just curious...

Re:How "native"? Importing too?

[ColaMan (37550)]

If you were reading one of our PDFs, you could be assured that the content was accurate.
I hope you don't stake the whole company on that. I do a simple pdftops (or, print to a postscript printer) , edit the postscript file in any number of editors, then pstopdf again. This is all with standard ghostscript tools.

In fact I've often done it to people's protected PDF tender documents, just to get large portions of text to include in our reply/quote.

Without document signing (and people checking for that *every single time* they open the document) you're screwed.

Re:How "native"? Importing too?

[commodoresloat (172735)]

So? The point the poster above was making is that PDF is not the answer to document security. Especially if you're not using the password protection built into PDF, but even with it, the information can be manipulated by someone who wants to. The GP poster didn't make any sense - why would putting docs in PDF guarantee they hadn't been changed? Someone could easily create an entirely different PDF if they didn't want to buy (or steal) acrobat to toy with the original one.

Now if only...

[Deacon_Yermouf (900678)]

... they could incorporate a minimalist, fast pdf viewer into Windows itself, I would happy. Ever since zip support was incorporated into XP, I've been so pleased that I've had no reason to download winzip. And the Windows "Picture and Fax" image viewer is exactly what I had wanted for a while- a fast, simple way to view images, zoom in, etc. That's what I would want for .pdf's in Windows, a simple way to quickly open, view, and print. And with Adobe's latest offerings getting bigger, more bloated, and more irritating with each new release, believe me, it can't come fast enough. Thank God for www.oldversion.com [oldversion.com].

Try Foxit PDF Reader

[manastungare (596862)]

Foxit [foxitsoftware.com] reminds me of OS X's Preview every time I use it. Fast, lean, and loads quickly. It may not read some of the more advanced stuff that PDFs may contain, but it's great for previewing/printing. Free as in beer. No install required, so I even carry a copy on my thumbdrive.

4.5 years after OS X had PDF file output standard

[XavierItzmann (687234)]

OS X 10.0 (Cheetah), March 24, 2001
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X [wikipedia.org]

"Redmond, start your photocopiers"

Office 12 Screenshots

[d2_m_viant (811261)]

For those who haven't seen them yet, Office 12 Screenshots: http://pdc.xbetas.com/?page=o12preview1 [xbetas.com]

Native PDF Support

[KajiCo (463552)]

WOW, PDF support in Office 12, amazing how innovative microsoft is... let me just print and save this amazing article through my Native PDF print driver here on my little ole' primitive Macintosh for later use...

PDF Printer Driver

[mlewan (747328)]

A solution that would be kinder to the competition would be to have a system wide PDF printer driver, like MacOS X has. In that way you could print to PDF from any application.

Isn't there such a thing hanging around as freeware already in Windows, btw?

Re:PDF Printer Driver

[MightyYar (622222)]

Two options that I know of:

PDF995 [pdf995.com], which is ad-supported (or was last I used it).

PDFCreator [wurzel6.de], which is free and open-source.

I know there are others, those are just the two I've used - successfully, I might add.

Re:PDF Printer Driver

[eMartin (210973)]

There are a few.

http://www.primopdf.com/ [primopdf.com]

http://www.pdf995.com/ [pdf995.com]

http://sector7g.wurzel6.de/pdfcreator/index_en.htm [wurzel6.de]

http://www.paehl.com/pdf/ [paehl.com]

Innovation

[by Anonymous Coward]

Say what you will about Microsoft, this is one company that knows how to innovate. Innovation runs in its blood. Microsoft really innovates like nobody else. Built-in PDF support is an excellent idea. No one ever thought about doing it but Microsoft did. Sometimes we are ready for their innovation as is the case with the PDF support. And sometimes Microsoft is ahead of the times as in the case of Microsoft Bob. This is one innovative company though.

BS Regarding the 30,000

[SerpentMage (13390)]

Is it not amazing that MS is supporting PDF? AFTER MA made its decision with use on Open Document formats? I mean if this is such a great feature, then why was it not discussed at the PDC? Oh yeah, forgot at that time the MA decision was not final. So I wish MS would admit that they are doing this so that they can be MA decision compliant (http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,390203 96,39215912,00.htm [zdnet.co.uk]) and not because "the customer" wanted it. BECAUSE the customer has wanted it for ages!

PDF --- A Relic of the Age of Paper

[Lucas Membrane (524640)]

PDF is the most miserable format to have to read the way that most of us do most of our reading -- on a computer. I've got lousy (ie over-50) eyes, so I magnify everything with that zoom magnifier so that the text fills the screen horizontally. What happens when I scroll down? Because pdf is for paper, and paper has different right and left margins depending on whether you're on a right or left page, the next page won't have its print filling my screen, it's off to the left or right. Play with the horizontal scroll bar every page. Thanks, pdf. Then, because it thinks the printed page is everything, Ctrl-A doesn't select 'All' text, just all text on the current page. And don't get me started on documents presented newspaper style, where I've gotta keep scrolling up and down, left and right. And page down gives the next page of text (according to the hypothetical paper), not the next screen of text according to the actual viewing device. That's so close to useless, you'd think MS invented it. The objective in software is to achieve device independence. The PDF viewer manages to achieve device dependence on a device that isn't even in use (paper). Paper is going to be an exception. A printable e-book would be nice, but if I want a paper book, I don't need a computer. To make the computer subservient to the dead tree is upside-down design.

Totally true!

[Inoshiro (71693)]

If only there was some kind of extensible document format [coverpages.org] that let people have it be both printable and viewable on a monitor! We'd have to let the style sheets cascade [w3.org], but then we could even support things like text-to-speech [w3.org] from the same document meant for printing and viewing! Hey, why stop there, why not make it a markup language [w3.org] so that we can add other neat features, like hyper links!

Wow, though, that's a lot of standards work. We might need a standards body [w3.org] to oversee it. Maybe someday, people will start to encode information in this format [wikipedia.org] so that we can view it comfortable on our monitors without fucking around with stupid documents [goldmark.org].

  -=-

Sarcasm aside, it's totally not a technology issue -- it's a people issue. PDF has its place in forms you want printed off, because it currently has momentum. I have no idea why people resist using the alternate solutions which have added benefits beyond the PDF momentum.
    Bug the people who put up PDFs for use. People using PDFs where they should be using XML is lot like people using Shockwave flash where they should be using XML.

ahhhhh!!!

[GimmeFuel (589906)]

Anyone else cringe when they read this?

native support for the PDF document format

In other words,

native support for the Portable Document Format document format

And yet I've been doing this in OpenOffice

[bahwi (43111)]

for awhile now. Which is great, open up presentation, make one, and save it as a PDF makes for great easy marketing PDF's. =)

Re:OpenOffice

[jimicus (737525)]

While I'm generally system-agnostic (It'll get me modded to oblivion, but IMO the best system is the one which does what you want it to do), there is one minor historical fact here.

Microsoft are not an innovative company, technology-wise. Innovation, invention, call it what you will, implies either creating something totally new or at the very least putting an original spin on something which already exists.

Where Microsoft do excel is in marketing. They have historically been masters at looking at the market and making their decisions based on where the market is going - generally by buying out or essentially copying the competition. cf. Excel vs. Lotus 1-2-3, Netscape vs. IE (granted, Netscape 4 was more than a little bloated and crufty, but I don't think the outcome would have been much different if it was sleek and efficient).

Don't get me wrong, they do have a few good products in their portfolio (I don't care whether or not YOU find shared calendars in Exchange useful, the business world does). But practically nothing that's particularly innovative.

There is a pint of beer sitting on my desk waiting for the first person who can name a reasonably successful product or technology - past or present - which Microsoft pioneered.

Re:Doesn't this somehow infringe?

[krunk4ever (856261)]

I always thought the PDF format was a free format (hence Apple has preview) and there's also tons of other PDF editors and printers besides Adobe. The format that is licensed to Adobe is the PS (post-script). That's why printers that support PS are so expensive because each printer with PS support sold needs to pay royalty to Adobe.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_For mat [wikipedia.org]

These documents can be one page or thousands of pages, very simple or extremely complex with a rich use of fonts, graphics, colour, and images. PDF is an open standard, and anyone may write applications that can read or write PDFs royalty-free.

Re:So what does this do to thier "competing" forma

[TheNetAvenger (624455)]

Metro? Thy production team be disbanded...

More likely PDF support will be built through Metro, as basically Metro is the XPS system in a Document.

As for the post above... Silly...

PDF will be rendered using Metro technologies is my guess, as they are not coding to the GDI but XPS. XPS is the new Windows/Document/Printer XAML format that the OS uses for virtually EVERYTHING.

Even CALLS between applications in exchanging data will pass XAML XPS information, let allow this is how the OS passes info to the Screen to Draw and the Pinter to Print.

GDI conversion layers are included for both way compatibility for Screen and Printer. i.e. your app uses XAML(WPF/XPS) to display something, but your driver only knows GDI, it will convert it.

Does everything Microsoft does have to be sinister?

How about this for a 'senerio'... For better performance and to take advantage of some of the new drawing capabilities in the WPF, chances are Adobe will even make a PDF reader for Windows that uses XAML/XPS/WPF to render the PDF information to the screen and the printer.

So does that make Adobe evil too?

These are such borderline (as a lot of people get them confused) concepts, but yet different. Metro is an extention of how elegant the new 3D Vector system built in Windows is - and also how different it is from anything Apple or anyone else has even attempted to do. Bascially when new applications for Windows are rendering cool graphics on the screen or printer, they are using XML in the from of XAML - which looks a lot like SVG, but has a 'chunk' of different abilities and purposes than SVG does.

So Metro is basically just saying, ok instead of drawing this to the screen, save it in a Document, a Metro Document - because the communication system for Graphic and any form of Media content throughout Windows is built in a simple and efficient XML format.

I though Slashdot like using concepts like XML?

Re:So what does this do to thier "competing" forma

[Overly Critical Guy (663429)]

Metro is an extention of how elegant the new 3D Vector system built in Windows is - and also how different it is from anything Apple or anyone else has even attempted to do. Bascially when new applications for Windows are rendering cool graphics on the screen or printer, they are using XML in the from of XAML - which looks a lot like SVG, but has a 'chunk' of different abilities and purposes than SVG does. So Metro is basically just saying, ok instead of drawing this to the screen, save it in a Document, a Metro Document

So after you get done hyperventilating over this super-exciting "new" Microsoft innovation, why don't you read up on OS X and what it has done with PDF for the past five years? Quartz, also vector-based, is built on the PDF object graph, which is itself a subset of Postscript, and has allowed applications to save their contents to a PDF for years. It's one of the reasons OS X is so great with desktop publishing--what you see really is exactly what you'll get, down to the typography spacing, because the same graphics operations drawing the screen are also what get sent to the printer and what get saved to PDF.

Re:So what does this do to thier "competing" forma

[Doppler00 (534739)]

Ha, you don't understand Microsoft very well. My guess is that the PDF support will be severly crippled. In which case, they will make the PDF format over time look less desirable than their own competing format. I mean, didn't they do the same thing with Java, releasing their own crippled JVM included in every copy of windows? Microsoft eventually replaced it with .NET.

What better way to defeat the competition than by releasing a crippled version of their format that's automatically bundeled with your system, and then coming out with a better "solution".

Just a theory.

Re:So what does this do to thier "competing" forma

[Doppler00 (534739)]

Well, Microsoft did extend their JVM with some extra ties into windows and classes that specifically made it easier to write Windows applications that were run under Java (but not write once, run anywhere). However, this was back at Java version 1.0. Microsoft totally didn't bother upgrading their JVM to support features in Java 1.2, and above. Thus, most computers were shipped with a crippled, outdated version of Java.

The problem is, that most web java apps were based on this crippled version of Java. Since that's the case, if you're a web developer you're not going to force people to upgrade your version, so you just stay with what comes standard on Windows. In this way, Microsoft prevented Sun's Java from gaining a significant foothold on Windows.