XPS
XML Paper Specification
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XPS format passes first standardisation testhttp://www.printweek.com/news/674714/XPS-format-passes-first-standardisation-test/ By Simon Nias, PrintWeek, 2 August 2007. Microsoft's XML Paper Specification (XPS) came a step closer to standardisation last week when ECMA International's technical committee 46 (TC46) held its inaugural meeting. The committee, which was created at ECMA’s general assembly last month, met at Queen's College, Cambridge, to begin work on producing a formal industry standard for Microsoft's PDF-rivalling print and document format.- XPS - |
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Global Graphics' Martin Bailey Chairs New Ecma Committee Formed To Standardize XPShttp://members.whattheythink.com/news/newslink.cfm?id=27838 Cambridge, UK and Centreville, VA: July 3, 2007: Global Graphics' chief technology officer Martin Bailey has been appointed by standards development body Ecma International to chair a new technical committee that will work on producing a formal industry standard for the XML Paper Specification (XPS), the new print and document format introduced by Microsoft with Windows Vista. The Technical Committee 46 (TC 46) was created at the Ecma International General Assembly on 28 June. Ecma states that the aim of TC46 is to 'provide a standard, secure and highly trustworthy format that enables a wide set of applications, devices, tools and platforms to implement compatible paginated-document workflows.' Martin Bailey comments, 'We're taking a specification that's very new but already has a large potential user base, and feeding that into an open standards process. That's an unusual opportunity to gain the best of both worlds: the speed of development by a single vendor, combined with the mandate to address the broad base of user requirements that a standards body brings.'- XPS - |
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Ecma International creates TC46 to standardize XML Paper Specificationhttp://www.ecma-international.org/news/PressReleases/Ecma%20creates%20TC46.htm Ecma International creates TC46 to standardize XML Paper Specification. The new open standard simplifies and improves electronic paper workflow process. At the General Assembly meeting on 28 and 29 June 2007, Ecma International has created Technical Committee 46 (TC46) to produce a formal standard for an XML-based electronic paper format and XML-based page description language which is consistent with existing implementations of the format called the XML Paper Specification (XPS). The aim is to provide a standard, secure and highly trustworthy format that enables a wide set of applications, devices, tools and platforms to implement compatible paginated-document workflows.- XPS - |
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Lighting up the XML Paper Specification [Proof-of-concept XPS reader for Silverlight!]Microsoftblogger Delay has a Proof-of-concept XPS reader for Silverlight: Since getting involved with Silverlight and finding out the XPS document type WPF enables has XAML at its core, I've been wondering how Silverlight would do as a lightweight XPS viewer. First, a bit of background: WPF is the Windows Presentation Foundation and represents a new approach to UI for Windows. XPS refers to the XML Paper Specification, a device-independent file format for flexible document representation (think PDF) that's part of Office 2007 and .NET 3.0. WPF offers rich support for displaying XPS documents via its DocumentViewer and XpsDocument classes (among others). Because the 1.1 Alpha release doesn't currently include the relevant classes, Silverlight wouldn't appear to be well suited for XPS document display at first glance... However, Silverlight does have the Downloader class which includes support for packages (for the purposes of this discussion, packages are basically just ZIP archives). Since an XPS document is really just a package, and the core document format XPS uses is XAML, and Silverlight speaks XAML (well, at least a subset of it!), maybe it's not such a stretch to do XPS with Silverlight after all.- XPS - XAML - |
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XML Paper Specification on Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_Paper_Specification The XML Paper Specification (XPS), formerly codenamed "Metro", is a document storage and viewing specification developed by Microsoft. It is aimed to be a complete XML-based (more specifically XAML-based) specification for a printer page description language based on a completely new print path, a color-managed device independent and resolution independent vector-based document format which encapsulates an exact representation of the actual printed output and support for advanced printing features such as gradients, transparencies, CMYK color space, named colors, printer calibration, print schemas etc. The document format also doubles up as the native print spooler format. XPS competes with PostScript and PDF. XPS supports the Windows Color System color management technology for better color conversion accuracy across devices and also includes a software raster image processor (RIP).- XPS - XAML - |
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XML Paper Specification: Overviewhttp://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/default.mspx Microsofts site about XPS. The XML Paper Specification (XPS) makes modern documents possible for all. Simply put, XPS describes electronic paper in a way that can be read by hardware, read by software, and read by humans. With XPS, documents print better, can be shared easier, be archived with confidence, and are more secure. Microsoft has integrated XPS-based technologies into the 2007 Microsoft Office system and the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system, but XPS itself is platform independent, openly published, and available royalty-free. Microsoft is using XPS to bring additional document value to its customers, its partners, and the computing industry.- XPS - |
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XPS Team BlogMicrosoft's XPS Team Blog about the XML Paper Specification and the Open Packaging Conventions- XPS - |
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Ecma TC46 - XML Paper Specification (XPS)http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/TC46.htm The goal of the Technical Committee is to produce a formal standard for office productivity applications within the Ecma International standards process which is fully compatible with the Office Open XML Formats. The aim is to enable the implementation of the Office Open XML Formats by a wide set of tools and platforms in order to foster interoperability across office productivity applications and with line-of-business systems. The Technical Committee will also be responsible for the ongoing maintenance and evolution of the standard.- XPS - |
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Microsoft and ECMA: Together again, doing it againhttp://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=1699 IBMs Bob Sutor: The standard must be compatible with Microsoft's implementation, which is the only implementation. How open. How independent. How collaborative. What do you think? Should we just save time and money and let Microsoft simply define international standards for us based on what they put in their products?- XPS - |
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Stephen Walli: Microsoft Continued Standards Abuse, PDF and the XML Paper Specificationhttp://stephesblog.blogs.com/my_weblog/2007/06/microsoft-conti.html ... Once again we have Microsoft dumping its new product specification into ECMA, with a scope that says the standard must align with the product. They originally presented the format as their PDF killer as if that was somehow a feature customers need, so we also understand they're not evolving anything, they're just competing with an accepted standard. I'm a big fan of Heinlein's (or Hanlon's) Razor, but regardless of whether this is malice or stupidity on Microsoft's part, it's very wrong from a standards perspective. We need just to say "no".- XPS - |
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There They Go Again: It's Time to Just Say No to Microsoft and Ecmahttp://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20070629070544217 Andy Updegrove, ConsortiumInfo.org: This seems to me to be a turning point for the creation of global standards. Microsoft was invited to be part of the original ODF Technical Committee in OASIS, and chose to stand aside. That committee tried to do its best to make the standard work well with Office, but was naturally limited in that endeavor by Microsoft's unwillingness to cooperate. This, of course, made it easier for Microsoft to later claim a need for OOXML to be adopted as a standard, in order to "better serve its customers." The refusal by an incumbent to participate in an open standards process is certainly its right, but it is hardly conduct that should be rewarded by a global standards body charged with watching out for the best interests of all. If OOXML, and now Microsoft XML Paper Specification, each sail through Ecma and are then adopted by ISO/IEC JTC1, then I think that we might as well declare "game over" for open standards. It's time for the National Bodies to draw a line in the sand and reject Ecma 376 %u2013 before it's too late.- XPS - |
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