So much for Word catching up with OpenOffice

Well, look at this... Once again, open source has proven its worth thanks to the ability to worm around being sued.
Nothing against payed-for software (heck, if I made a word processor I'd be charging a dollar less than Microsoft would charge if Word was standalone!), but I find this to be great fun.

http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_to_Drop_PDF_Support_in_Office/1149284222

Have to say, though, I really don't like Adobe or their overly popular PDF format.
I used to dislike Macromedia, too, (ever since Flash seemingly replaced Javascript for the simplest of tasks) but both dislikes can now be filtered into one.

Yay.

EK, I like some Adobe products, but when they don't work properly they can be really bad. I remember Photoshop having problems on a whole bunch or our PC's at work.

Mostly those with Via chipsets and 4 in 1 drivers. Got random hard resets, and sudden crash to desktop, plus a few other bugs that didn't get fixes through a couple of versions.

I prefer them to macromedia, just find their apps a little more intuitive. Probably because I used Premiere and Photoshop for so long, that I got used to Adobe's way of doing things.

Are you serious? Sueing open source projects is the favorite pass-time of practically everybody.

Please don't tell me, you believe Microsoft don't have the money to secure a license to generate PDFs from Office. This decision was Microsofts, and Microsofts alone. Stop trying to blame Sun or Adobe.

PDF is an open standard? Well that certainly says a lot about the misconceptions held at Microsoft.

Wait, Microsoft Office saving a file to PDF would kind of make Acrobat useless, no? Good for Adobe, this was another way MS tried to get a technology for free.

MS is a big bully, trying to make it sound like Adobe is an arse. Having MS Office installed in most business areas, why would anyone purchase Adobe Acrobat Pro then if Word will do it already? Man, corporate politics.

I also think when Adobe said OPEN format, it meant that the way information is stored will be revealed, not used to create an acrobat writer clone and undercut Adobe's own product line.

But the point is, that even if Adobe is being an arse, they're not any worse than Microsoft. At least Adobe have licensing option for it's propriety formats and software, unlike for example Microsoft.

I think it's funny how you get all those Microsoft engineers whineing in their blogs because Microsoft for once got a taste of their own medicne.

Whah! We're not getting PDF support on the same terms as OpenOffice! Here comes the clue train, last stop you - you're not providing your software on the same terms as OpenOffice either, moron.

Stick with Office95. It's the daddy!

In my opinion there is a huge difference if there is pdf support in a freeware software or the biggest firm in the world wants to make big money with this "new" feature.

Therefore I think it is ok if Adobe wants to have some money for their hard work. You won't get office 2007 for free or will you?

Microsoft spent two decades penetrating 90% of the market with their proprietary closed formats. Now that they see little to no competition, they decided to come up with "open" formats because they are so nice. Oh, and anyone who doesn't follow suit, now that they decided to do it, is a bad company.

Pfff, kind of hypocrytical on their part. Also, as someone stated, OpenOffice does not make money for Sun. Microsoft, on the other hand, charges $250+ for their office system. So why can't Adobe get a portion of that income for their technology?

Oh, and the lawsuit is a speculation by Microsoft. Adobe has not stated anything. Everything is speculation, no one really knows why it broke down and on what terms and what will happen.

I like Windows. I like .NET. I like Visual Studio. But I hate their business practice sometimes.

There are already free alternatives to Acrobat. Most come in the form of a printer driver where you literally print to a PDF file. I think Acrobat has a lot of features beyond just creating a PDF from a saved document, something that seems to have been ignored in the discussion so far.

Adobe make their product more desirable than a 'save as PDF' option. Acrobat offers the following facilities above and beyond the free PDF creators: -

PDF forms.
Document reviewing.
Document commenting.
File attachments.
Include Visio custom data.
A range of security features.

I somehow doubt that Microsoft ever intended to include all this functionality within the saved PDF. I can understand Adobe's response, they are merely trying to protect their product and IP which is a very reasonable thing to do, considering how much they have spent on development.

I think the anti-MS backlash is somewhat OTT. I'm by no means a MS fanboy (quite the opposite) but let's have a bit of decorum? Mind you, what am I saying? This is an internet forum after all, rife with pedantry ;)

I've just played around with the Beta of Office 2007 (from the c't) and what i've seen so far is a really nice improvement, also in detail. Now if only it would be cheaper and available crossplatform (one licence for x os's)...

Adobe is total into paranoia. They have a inferiority complex regarding M$. Moreover they're a big monopolist by themself (even more after acquiring MM), just look at their prices. Have i already said that they produce bloated code in many products? Maybe they are more M$ than M$ is?! ;O)

I hope that PDF will be replaced by ODF...

Does office 2007 run under winxp too?

Yep, xp+sp2.

nice, have to check it then... :)

I like OpenOffice.org, heck, I even uninstalled most of OfficeXP because in my eyes, bang for buck... its a far superior set of applications! The only thing I have left in is Excel, which I use for invoices and stuff.

Dabz

what's wrong with openoffice calc for that?

I agree with Dabz. The first day I installed OpenOffice was also the day I uninstalled MS Office, and it's never been reinstalled. The only thing that MS's version had that Open's doesn't is an equivalent to Outlook, but since I had already moved to Thunderbird by that time, I didn't care about that either. I've used PDF export from OO a lot, and it's something that MS Office should have, but it wouldn't have persuaded me to part with cash for it even if it had.

Well, OpenOffice is good compared to the old MS Offices for personal usage or where the people you communicate with also use it. It's not great if you a) work with clients who use MS Office as there are still quirks or b) have to work in an existing infrastructure/workflow where MS Office is used.

I do still own a copy of Papyrus ( http://www.rom-logicware.com/ ) which is really fast and clean! :O) The only bad thing is that i think they rip you for the crosslicence.

I rate the current version of OpenOffice.org above Office 2003, and the PDF export facility is a very handy feature.

However, I downloaded the Office 2007 Beta yesterday and have spent a little time playing around with it. It is one of those rare applications that has made me say 'Wow'. It really is pretty slick stuff.

How well it fares after extended usage compared with a well set up Office 2003 is another matter. What is nice to see is that many of the painful limitations and shortcomings of older versions of Office have finally gone - the horrible multi-row tabbed options dialog has been replaced at last and the graphs are now much prettier.

I wasn't quite so smitten on Internet Explorer 7 though - I would still recommend FireFox or Opera over that.

I will use OpenOffice Calc, eventually, though, until I have the time to sit down and play with it a little, Excel is my current choice!

At the moment, I'm putting my spare time into creating a website before I sort out the advertising for my new buisness, which is priority!

I'm even thinking of ditching Windows and going with Linux full time, what with the current crop of DRM bollocks kicking around... Why, I hear you ask... Because I don't want to be tempted to buy a £30 game, then install it, and end up with some faceless publisher's crapware screwing it all up, potentially costing me a fortune to fix!

All in all, OpenOffice does provide me with everything I need, but at the moment, and in a buisness sense...

Excel works, which means Windows stays (At the moment).

Dabz

Actually, This is just microsoft saying that they *think* Adobe might sue them, nothing more...

But in all reality, more than likely the *real* reason is that Microsoft knows that if they had solid PDF support, their brand spaking new XPS format (which is kind of microsoft's propriatary PDF alternative) doesn't stand a chance in hell of actually becoming a standard. So what's the easiest way to give XPS a head start? Why, drop support for PDF of course! Coincidence? I think not.

And we wouldn't want people to have the option of using an open, universal standard like PDF where they don't need Microsoft Windows to be able to view your files, right? By unleashing yet another microsoft-only fileformat on the world, windows' stronghold only gets reinforced. Imagine giving people a *way out*... Can't have that, can we?

(XPS was formerly known as 'Metro', and was MS's answer to PDF)

More info: http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,2180,1879110,00.asp

Well, thankfully, there's an obvious, undeniable, arse-kicking solution. PDF viewers should gain support for Word documents!

I can't see a point to MS doing their own PDF replacement.
If they did that, they would need an XPS making program, because Word doesn't cut it; it's tethered around the HTML world of tables and content that adjusts based on the user's input such as window width and text size. (And I've written many times that I really hate how almost all word processors seem to do that).

As for PDF... I am not happy with the way it's going.
The features Adobe is adding would be better off as developments for web browsers and web standards.
Saving, printing and emailing form content, for example, would be a marvellous addition to a web browser.
Commenting web pages in a freeform manner is currently doable with two extensions in Firefox. One uses a web service so that comments can be shared over the Internet, and the other is a bit ugly but improveable and uses local storeage to download whole web pages containing notes/comments.

A bit of HTML to position text Exactly As Written without taking user parameters into account would be a good thing to have. Browsers should be able to download required fonts from repositories, and, if available, the site being viewed.

This would brighten things up and be a lot easier on bandwidth than PDFs.

That's all going to happen eventually and I don't want two things for the same job.


With PDF doing all those things like forms and comments, I can see one outcome:
The PDF format making an unresolveable, irritating, invisible and failed attempt to replace HTML.

The attraction to PDF is that the files are like compiled HTML, and objects can be reliably positioned in a freeform manner similar to a regular image, which is ideal for eBooks and manuals.
Any additions beyond that are not worth it, which is why Adobe should stop messing around with it and move on.

I doubt it. With all the major players hell bent on ruining the Internet (like with the COPE act for example) I doubt the future will bring much in the way of innovation with regards to open standards.

And by the way, PDF forms are absolutely brilliant. Particularly since we live in a society where only hardcopies matter.

Here's a preview video from office2k7:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/ui/video.mspx