Using XPS Documents in Windows XP and 2003

Posted by Johan Cyprich on 23 Jun 2009 | Tagged as: How To

Adobe’s PDF document format finally has some serious competition for market share. Microsoft XPS (XML Paper Specification) is a new electronic document format that can be generated from any application and then distributed without requiring that application to view it. XPS essentially does the same thing as PDF. Windows Vista has a native viewer, but viewers can be installed in Windows XP and 2003.

Installing on Windows XP and 2003

Free XPS viewers can be found at the View and Generate XPS page from Microsoft’s Windows Hardware Developer Central site. There are two options, the Microsoft XPS Viewer, which Vista already has, and Microsoft XPS Essentials Pack. The Microsoft XPS Viewer only integrates XPS with Internet Explorer, but the Essentials Pack installs a stand-alone viewer. All users, including Vista, should install this for viewing documents outside of a web browser.

Once either application is installed, you can generate an XPS document with the Microsoft XPS Document Writer by printing to it in the same way that a PDF is made. One thing that you’ll notice is that an XPS file can be created much faster than a PDF. This is probably due to the more limited functionality that it has as opposed to PDF, but over time this will change as more is added to it.

The Future

Will XPS replace PDF? More and more companies are starting to use it, notably Autodesk as a replacement for their DWF format. As Vista and Windows 7 are increasingly used, we’ll see more documents shared in XPS. There are free PDF generators, but they’re not being widely used. Eventually, printers will be able to use XPS directly which will give an alternative to Postscript.



Tweet This Tweet This Post!

Related posts:
    Use Office 2007 Documents in Office 2003
    Moving the My Documents Folder
    Opening a DWFx Document in Windows XP
    OpenDocument: One Standard To Rule Them All

Share this post:

del.icio.us:Using XPS Documents in Windows XP and 2003 digg:Using XPS Documents in Windows XP and 2003 spurl:Using XPS Documents in Windows XP and 2003 wists:Using XPS Documents in Windows XP and 2003 simpy:Using XPS Documents in Windows XP and 2003 newsvine:Using XPS Documents in Windows XP and 2003 blinklist:Using XPS Documents in Windows XP and 2003 furl:Using XPS Documents in Windows XP and 2003 reddit:Using XPS Documents in Windows XP and 2003 fark:Using XPS Documents in Windows XP and 2003 blogmarks:Using XPS Documents in Windows XP and 2003 Y!:Using XPS Documents in Windows XP and 2003 smarking:Using XPS Documents in Windows XP and 2003 magnolia:Using XPS Documents in Windows XP and 2003 segnalo:Using XPS Documents in Windows XP and 2003 gifttagging:Using XPS Documents in Windows XP and 2003

Follow Me:

Did you find this post interesting and useful? You can keep up to date on this blog by subscribing to my RSS feed, or you can have new posts sent to you by e-mail. You can also follow me on Twitter.


No Comments »

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed

Leave a Reply

CommentLuv Enabled