//beconfused

Looks like PDF won’t be include the upcoming version of 2007 Microsoft Office System. It’s kinda disappointing for me actually. It’s one of the more anticipated features of 2007 Microsoft Office System.

WSJ: Microsoft Expects Adobe to File Antitrust Suit

Microsoft Corp. said it expected Adobe Systems Inc. to file an antitrust suit in Europe after talks to use Adobe’s technology broke down this week, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The two companies have been in discussions over the use of Adobe’s Portable Document Format, or PDF, within Microsoft’s Office suite of applications, the Journal reported, quoting Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith.

Adobe wants Microsoft to remove the feature and offer Adobe’s technology separately for a fee. Microsoft has agreed to remove the feature, but is unwilling to charge for it, the Journal reported.

In February, Adobe Chief Executive Bruce Chizen told Reuters he considered Microsoft to be the company’s biggest concern. “The competitor I worry about most is Microsoft,” Chizen said at the time.

Adobe’s PDF technology lets producers create and distribute documents digitally that retain designs, pictures and formatting.

Source: eWeek

Perhaps Microsoft XML Paper Specification (XPS) may grow popular due to this. I tried the XPS viewer actually and it’s surprising good. I mean it doesn’t have those features that Adobe Acrobat Reader has. And that’s a blessing. Oh my god, more than half of the Acrobat Reader features are crap. XPS viewer is lightweight and has none of those crap. I hope Microsoft won’t add any more crap to XPS. If you have the XPS viewer, try pressing Ctrl+T on your keyboard and watch the nice little animation of your pages becoming thumbnails. You can click on the thumbnail to go to a particular page.

Tags: adobe, microsoft, office