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Sunday, October 02, 2005 2:46 PM PT Posted by Harry McCracken
More on Office 12 and PDF
Among the interesting questions raised by the news that Microsoft Office 12 will do PDF natively is this: What does this development mean for "Metro," a technology that will be built into Windows Vista, and which has been called a would-be PDF killer?Well, while Metro has some PDF-like aspects, it's not an exact PDF clone by any means. (Here are some thoughts to that effect from former PC Worlder Ed Bott.) Metro is an upgrade to Windows' printing infrastructure, one that requires new, Metro-savvy printers to truly show its stuff--so it was clearly never designed to be something that would swoop in and render PDF irrelevant overnight. And it's an OS-level technology, while the PDF news relates to Office 12.
(Side note: Apple's Mac OS includes basic PDF capabilities as part of the platform; would the Windows world be a better place if Windows did the same?)
Anyhow, this news about Office PDF presumably doesn't mean that Metro will disappear, or even be deemphasized. But if Office 12's PDF capabilities work smoothly, they'll probably deliver more instant gratification than Metro will, no matter what its eventual fate. At least for anyone who upgrades to Office 12, and mostly works in the Office apps.
Two questions for any Microsoft Office users who happen to read this:
1) Are you currently producing PDFs from Office, via Adobe Acrobat or any alternative PDF-producing product?
2) Are you any more likely to upgrade to Office 12 now that we know it'll do PDF natively?
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Myself and my employees are currently creating PDFs from office documents through adobe acrobat professional.
I think having the pdf functionality integrated is a GREAT idea and definitely welcome it. I believe that feature alone warrants an upgrade to office 12.
For people who haven't already shelled out the money to buy Acrobat, this will definately be a great reason to upgrade to Office 12.
I use an alternate free program to turn MS Office documents of all sorts into pdf's. Would not upgrade to Office12 for this feature.
The major downside to PDFs for me in the windows world is the time they take to render. If MS could make a program like OSX's Preview, that would be great. I'm a fan of PDF in general, so if Office joined Macs and OpenOffice, that would be great. I wouldn't upgrade soley for this feature, but if they had enough stuff, it would be worth it.
Yes indeed, OpenOffice is very good in this regard. 2.0 RC1, which has just been released, is very stabile and has PDF conversion built in, though I dont think it can edit them natively. Still alot cheaper (free is always cheaper) than Abobe's PDF creator program.
Still, it will be a welcome feature in Office 12, which seems to be very good in many other regards.
Yes, definitely. I have a website http://NeoSmart.net/ where I write free whitepapers. I type them in Microsoft Word 2003 as XML files, then convert them with Adobe Acrobat Professional 7, for hosting on my website. Sometime's URLs and margins don't convert 100% as they should. I'll definetly be upgrading soon as I get into the beta program.
3) Are you likely to upgrade if Office 12 will include native support for OASIS OpenDocument?
I would be less likely to upgrade to Office12 if it doesn't support the OpenDocument formats. The city that I live in is considering a Massachusetts style adoption of ODF formats and I sometimes do work for the city. I have downloaded OpenOffice and have been surprised at its power and feature list. I know that MS Office12 has a new user interface, so I know I have to learn something new anyway. I suppose that learning OpenOffice woudn't be very difficult.
Use CutePDF. Free and no taglines.
What Microsoft does with PDF is completely irrelevant to me, as I switched to OpenOffice.org a long time ago, and it has had this feature for a long time.
I Currently use CutePDF Writer to easily convert Office 2003 documents as well as documents from most other apps to PDF.
I would not upgrade to Office 12 simply for the PDF feature.
With this free PDF creator software (https://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/) and native support of printing/exporting to PDF in the free OpenOffice suite, I see no need to upgrade to Office 12. In fact, since downloading OpenOffice last year, I haven't touched MS Office.
With this free PDF creator software (https://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/) and native support of printing/exporting to PDF in the free OpenOffice suite, I see no need to upgrade to Office 12. In fact, since downloading OpenOffice last year, I haven't touched MS Office.
I use PDF Creator, a free program available at sourceforge. I would not shell out more money to MS for a feature I do not need...and, honestly, you just know MS is going to screw this up somehow...maybe you'll have to validate your copy of Windows before you will be able to create a PDF (he said only half-joking),
PDF export is already free (by using various tools). Upgrading to O12 just for that is a waste of money. I won't be upgrading my copy of Office 10 anytime soon (if ever). I want a browser-based office-like product with 80% of the features of MS Office.
Google Office... where are you???
Looks like MicroStuff is finally catching up with WordPerfect's ability to do this for several versions back
For home use, definitely not worth it. For business use, possibly. It depends on what you use PDF for. If you simply want to make your average word documents viewable the same way to anybody who would look at it, then that feature would be useful. If you're working in a marketing division where you create fancy brochures and fliers and stuff, trust me, Microsoft Word is not the tool for the job. It's not designed for desktop publishing (MS has the very originally-named "Publisher" for that; sarcasm intended). Basically, the main focus here should be on the functionality of the software, not the formats it can store data in.
Three phrases should be among the most common in our daily usage. They are: Thank you, I am grateful and I appreciate.