Opinion: Microsoft's demo at WinHEC for Longhorn's printing and document architecture, "Metro," looks promising. But getting software and hardware vendors to join the party may be tough.Adobe Systems' top brass can't seem to catch a break. Last week, company execs were riding high with the
acquisition of competitor Macromedia for $3.4 billion. Now, following Bill Gates' showing of Microsoft's forthcoming "Metro" document format and print architecture to developers at WinHEC in Seattle, some analysts say the end is near for Adobe PDF.
That "near" is relative, since the technology won't make its way into the market until late 2006 with the release of Windows Longhorn. In the past, Microsoft had told partners that it was planning to provide some form of document-management capability in its next-generation operating system.
However, the exact implementation was unclear, as Longhorn's feature set kept slipping. At WinHEC (Windows Hardware Engineering Conference), hardware developers—that is, printer manufacturers—discovered that the architecture code-named Metro was the solution.
However, Microsoft officials in Seattle denied that the company is taking aim at Adobe with Metro.
"One aspect of what we're addressing with Metro is fixed document format, which happens to be tied into [Longhorn's presentation subsystem] Avalon and XAML [Avalon's XML Applied Markup Language]," Microsoft's lead product manager for Windows, Greg Sullivan, explained to Microsoft Watch.
Click here to read more about Microsoft's "Metro" and analysts' reactions to the demonstration at WinHEC.
The Metro architecture certainly will provide a number of features associated with PDF and Adobe's PostScript page-rasterizing engine, including screen-to-printer fidelity of images and text. From the report, Microsoft officials look to get printer manufacturers writing new controllers that will be optimized for the architecture.
But good luck to companies seeking success meeting the "high-fidelity needs of the digital imaging marketplace" with the technology, as expressed in a statement by RIP (raster-image processor) vendor Global Graphics SA at WinHEC. The company demonstrated a native RIP for Metro.
PDF and PostScript are more than technologies. Rather, they are longstanding content software platforms used by professional content creators, publishers as well as enterprise and consumers.
Look at your network printer: It likely sports a PostScript interpreter. PDF is the foundation of many professional publishing workflows and it even forms the graphic underpinnings of the Quartz Extreme graphics engine used in Apple's OS X, including the "Tiger" release due at the end of the week.
So, Microsoft may have to wait until Metro printing gains traction with customers before printer vendors will be willing to spend the resources needed for new printer controllers. After all, the older GDI printing code will work, just more slowly, perhaps. And manufacturers could be wary given the recent history of Longhorn changes and Microsoft's sometimes hot-and-cold support for peripheral technologies.
Click here to read about how the current state of 64-bit driver support is a "mixed bag."
Just as an aside, while Adobe PostScript and printer controllers were the foundation of the laser printing industry (helped along by the Apple Macintosh and Aldus PageMaker), OEM PostScript sales are a small part of Adobe's business. In 2004, the company reported about $81.5 million in revenue from its controller licensing division, about 5 percent of the company's total.
Still, the topic of Metro and Microsoft cropped up in a discussion of the Macromedia deal with a printing industry insider last week. He is an executive with a content management vendor and has had technical dealings with both Microsoft and Adobe over the course of the past several decades. He declined attribution.
"It's one thing to be working on a standard and it's another thing entirely for it be in use in the marketplace," he said. "Microsoft can come up with any standard it wants but it's nothing until it's sold in products and in use. An alternative to PDF—why would anyone in this industry want such a thing?"
This exec was upbeat on Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia, pointing to the latter's better positioning for handling dynamic data and gaining a significant place in the Web content creation market.
"An archive is static data. But in the Web world and in [content] creation today, you want to change the content," he said.
"Even in documents you hardly touch, there are live links to warnings or trademarks, which change all the time. Adobe has played with variable printing and standards for dynamic data, but Macromedia understands this [technology] much better. It's a big play for Adobe. Everything changes in the Web world."
Adobe will have considerable breathing room in this Metro vs. PDF conflict, if there is such a fight.
Adobe also has another thing going for it in a fight over content-creation standards. A company with the dominant position with standards used by the content creation application will have an advantage, since there's always trouble when changing formats downstream.
David Morgenstern, senior news editor, brings to Ziff Davis Internet a long and varied career in the computer industry. Known for his coverage of microprocessor-based and high-performance storage, this award-winning editor has directed publications in the professional content creation and digital asset management areas. As a marketing manager, he's worked for monitor and digital video startups. Some may remember him "in the days" as the editor of Ziff Davis' MacWEEK.
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