The first PDF Reference Committee Meeting
Adobe’s goal of moving PDF from a publicly documented proprietary format to a true international standard is moving into higher gear.
AIIM’s new Portable Document Format (PDF) Reference Committee is holding its first meeting on July 16-17 (yes, in less than 2 weeks time), in Silver Spring, Maryland.
The page on AIIM’s website offers contact and meeting information - and (crucially) a “Download” button leading to the draft “Fast Track” document itself.
While I’ve spent relatively little time with it thus far (I do have a day job), it’s clear that Adobe has put a tremendous amount of work into revising the PDF Reference to prepare it for the ISO process. How will we know this version is really “equivalent” to the version 1.7? I’m looking forward to finding out. There must be something clever going on; the ISO PDF draft is a mere 768 pages, far shorter than the 1,310 page Reference it is intended to replace. Some old-school Adobe veterans have been managing the process, and I for one will be looking forward to their presentation.
As a self-appointed PDF Platform Evangelist, I was an instant fan of the “PDF-becomes-ISO” idea. I mean, duh. Microsoft sees the value as well, which is doubtless why they are now racing Adobe to see who can ramrod their own “electronic document” format into a standard first.
My money’s on Microsoft to win that race, but that’s mostly because no-one in the real world actually cares about XPS yet, if they ever will. People do already care about PDF. Whether that will translate into real stakeholder involvement in the standards process remains to be seen.
Later, I’ll attempt to report on highlights from both the meeting and the document. Stay tuned…
July 20th, 2007 at 10:42 am
I find the second to last paragraph (My money’s on Microsoft to win that race,…) confusing. Could you elaborate on what you mean?
July 20th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Microsoft is writing standards prior to the formation of an industry that might care about such things. There is no “industry” to support OOXML or XPS yet - there is only Microsoft’s say-so that These Are the Formats for Us. These formats are brand-new in the marketplace, and so jamming them into “standards” is bound to go easily - there’s no real constituency for it other than the standards-pusher themselves.
By contrast, PDF has been a recognized, published standard for years, lacking (as it were) only the formalism of ISO or other such bodies, with the accompanying strictures on language, and other such technicalities. Sure, Adobe could (and did) change the Reference how and when they liked, but there nonetheless grew an “ecosystem” of developers and implementers around PDF. These people have more than a passing interest in the PDF-ISO process, so we’re likely to see more cooks in the kitchen. Once we get to the first “post Adobe” Reference, that is.
July 25th, 2007 at 11:58 am
I agree that PDF is an obvious and active standard (whether or not ISOized), however despite it’s newness in relative terms XPS does sit in the same catagory. It has growing support from vendors and there are signs that this third party support will grow. Like PDF it doesn’t matter that this is non-Microsoft (or non-Adobe for PDF), the non-formalized standard is already in use by third parties who are actively using the “standard”.
Ironically Adobe is arguably an early supporter of XPS through it’s support in Acrobat 8 (although only on the Windows platform I believe), and this is a major reason for me wanting to upgrade to the latest Acrobat version! If Adobe don’t count as an independent industry supporter (putting others on one side) I’m not sure who does, although they understandably may not have drawn attention to the fact
Note on my interest - we are involved on printing software technologies both with Adobe and Microsoft technologies, and we expect both to continue to be important in the marketplace. We have worked with PostScript and PDF through multiple versions for years, and for the last few years with XPS too.
August 11th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Thanks for the comment.
I understand the PDF “platform” in document rather than print-stream terms. This bias affected (initially) my appreciation of your point.
As you say, XPS will continue to find applications in the print space (an irony in itself). I’ve always worked with PDF qua document, so to me, the print origins of PDF, and the way that has colored the document “aspect” of the technology, has always been a bit of a mystery to me. “Who are these people fretting over color-space and profiles?”
I should have said, therefore, that in strictly document terms, XPS may indeed sit in the same (broadly speaking) _technical_ category as PDF, but other comparisons seem decidedly premature.
How did your XPS->PDF conversion experience work out?