I am, by no means, as into ODF, PDF, Office, and document formats as my esteemed colleague Steve O’Grady. That, as Brandon often comments, is his passion.
I do, however, like PDF documents. Before PDF, you had to either open up The Beast to read a .doc file or hunt down a .ps reader. Both of those options are like using an 18 wheeler to deliver flowers. Not to mention the fact that every time I open a .doc file in Word to just read it, Word asks me if I want to save the changes. What changes? Just close and get out of my face.
Also, in case you didn’t know, I’m a Mac guy. PDFs are native on Macs. You can print anything to a PDF, and Apple’s Preview.app PDF reader is leagues ahead of Acrobat in speed and prettiness. (Maybe Acrobat has gotten faster and prettier, but why spend the time to check it out when Preview works great?) When I switched over to Macs 2-3 years ago, being able to print to PDF was one of the most amazing features in that it was one of those “oh, of course you’ll want to do that!”
PDF Not Going to be So Portable
So, with that context lined up, you’ll understand why the most interesting aspect of Office 2007 for me iswas the out-of-the-box ability to Save As PDF. Sure, there’s all sorts of vendor-sports reasons to be interested in Office, but that’s the one that was of most interest to me personally. PDF just works, and I was looking forward to the day when I’d never have to open a .doc file again.
But now, never mind that happy day:
Adobe wants the software giant to remove the PDF “save as” feature from its beta version of Office 2007 or to charge a fee for it, whereas Microsoft wants to offer that feature for free, said Dave Heiner, the deputy general counsel who oversees Microsoft’s antitrust cases.
“The ‘save as PDF’ feature is the second most popular request we get from customers,” Heiner said, adding, “Adobe has told the world that PDF is an open format…and (rival) products OpenOffice, WordPerfect Office and Apple (Computer’s applications) already support PDF and tout it as a selling feature. Microsoft should be able to support PDF as well.”
PDF will no longer be out-of-the-box for Office 2007.
The Problem with de facto Standards
PDF comes from that weird, liminal world of the 90’s when open standards and source weren’t quite understood. Those cob-webs, no doubt, help make snafus like this happen.
If I put myself in that 90’s mindset, I’m sympathetic with Adobe in that, sure, putting Save As PDF in Office would kill most Acrobat sales. But, on the other hand, limiting the creation of PDF documents will ultimately hurt Adobe more than it will help. As Adobe themselves and people like Workshare show, there’s a whole lot more to making money in document management than simply formatting the document.
There’s controlling who can see the document, cleaning out meta-data, expiring the document, and an endless list of other (though I shudder to say it) well-intentioned DRM features around documents. Sure, we all crave effortless distribution and portability of music in the form of MP3s, but do you want your medical records circulating as effortlessly as those MP3s?
This is one of my cynical models for making money off open source and other “free” software: if you help create a big enough mess, people will pay you to help clean it up. More people Saving As PDF in Office would create a huge PDF mess. Adobe could make plenty of money managing and cleaning up that mess. Q.E.D. ;>
Put more optimistically, the document market is primed for a freemium play, even giving away the functionality to create the raw documents. Thus, Adobe would have to shift the way it makes money to these higher level features once Save As support for PDF in Office infrastructurized PDF creation.
Innovation they call it.
The Winners
The users aren’t the winners, I’ll tell you that. On the other hand, it’s good news of the ODF camp. Not only can the
likes of Simon Phipps point at this disagreement between Adobe and Microsoft and say “See what I told you? Do you really want a ‘closed standard?'” but, it also greatly quells the very real threat that native PDF in Office could have been to ODF. PDFs are, more or less, universal as it is. If they were native in Office, they’d be like JPEGs or GIFs: anyone could produce and use them. The perfect micro-platform for documents.
So, really, what went wrong here? Probably the usual deadly technology cocktail of money, lawyers, hubris, and fear.
Just add it to the ever growing list of why you need a Mac ;>
Disclaimer: Adobe, Microsoft, Workshare, Sun, and Eclipse are clients.
Technorati Tags: adobe, de feactor, documents, drm, microsoft, odf, office, office2007, pdf, standards, word, workshare
While I would of course assert that the best recipe for freedom is open standards with multiple implementations at least one of which is open source, I have no glee over this dispute. It looks to me much more likely this is the next move in the promotion of Microsoft’s alternative to PDF, Metro. They will position it as “a true standard” and my gut tells me this is actually the first shot in a campaign to discredit PDF. I hope I’m wrong.
You’re spot-on Simon. Likely the “threat of lawsuit” was merely a “why are you trying to ’embrace and extend’ the PDF document format?” I could certainly understand Adobe trying to protect the format, but charging for licensing just isn’t something that they do. See: OS X, Xpdf, etc.
In any case, the article is very low on details and doesn’t present both sides. I’m much more inclined to believe that Microsoft is crying wolf so people don’t complain too loudly about the ‘Metro‘ format.
Indeed, I’m with both of you about their being more to the this story. I’ll admit I paid too much attention to Adobe while ignoring Microsoft.
We’ll have to see what Adobe says because, like I was saying, it seems advantagous to get PDF, out of the box, in Word.
In the mean time, I’ll be printing to PDF on OS X ;>
PDF's are fine and dandy for 'looking at' — but try and get under the hood of them and you'll discover just what a pain in the ass they are.
And that, in most cases, goes for Mac *AND* PC.
It's an open/closed/standard that as you said, has generated software packages up into the realm of thousands of dollars for purchase.
But being in the printing industy, there's no other alternative other than passing around graphic files (or PostScript), and of course since it's so (Mac wise?) easy to "Print to PDF, whee!" — you get a whole lot of PDF documents that are, in a nutshell, shit.
And since you can't really edit a PDF like you can other document files, it's a horrible, horrible mess to try and clean "that shit" up.
PDF's are fine and dandy for 'looking at' — but try and get under the hood of them and you'll discover just what a pain in the ass they are.
And that, in most cases, goes for Mac *AND* PC.
It's an open/closed/standard that as you said, has generated software packages up into the realm of thousands of dollars for purchase.
But being in the printing industy, there's no other alternative other than passing around graphic files (or PostScript), and of course since it's so (Mac wise?) easy to "Print to PDF, whee!" — you get a whole lot of PDF documents that are, in a nutshell, crap.
And since you can't really edit a PDF like you can other document files, it's a horrible, horrible mess to try and clean "that stuff" up.
“Ugh”: Yes, I’d have to agree. I’ll admit that my thinking in the above post was purely on the consuming end and “easy publishing” (as in “Print to PDF”). I’m sure if I had to deal with PDF behind-the-scenese (or any “Print to X” format) I’d be Ugh’ed myself.
"but do you want your medical records circulating as effortlessly as those MP3s?"
I actually think I would. I would very much rather have my medical records easily accessible than not have them in an emergency. I think a DRM protection would hinder doctors' ability to access them and be a detriment to my safety.
DRM is "Defective By Design" (http://www.defectivebydesign.org/)
"…controlling who can see the document, cleaning out meta-data, expiring the document, and an endless list of other (though I shudder to say it) well-intentioned DRM features around documents…"
Clearly the average user needs to be educated as to the security features available to them when creating PDFs. Ebook publishers have been using them for ages.