Hands on: Acrobat vs XPS

While rooting around the Microsoft website for information, I found exactly what I wanted ­ and it’s not often I am able to write that.

I had the chance to download a file, either as a 60MB DOCX or an XPS of less than half the size. Being on a slow connection, I chose the latter, and since I was using Windows Vista, which has an XPS reader built in, all was well.

So what, you may ask, is XPS? It has nothing to do with Windows XP or Office XP, but someone at Microsoft obviously likes those letters. It stands for XML Paper Specification, an open-standard, platform-independent, document format. It is supposedly a rival to the Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format), but I wouldn’t advise uninstalling Acrobat Reader just yet.

If you want to ‘Save as’ in XPS format, you first need Office 2007. Next you need to download an add-in that enables Word to create both PDF and XPS files. It’s really simple to use: it adds ‘PDF or XPS’ to the ‘Save As’ menu.

Having chosen which format you want, there’s a choice between a standard- or minimum-size version, and an option to view the file after saving. If you choose PDF as the format, then up pops Acrobat Reader, with your document displayed.

It’s undoubtedly useful to be able to create PDFs straight from Word without having to spend money, and it’s good to see Microsoft catch up with the likes of Ability Office, Wordperfect and Open Office, which have had this capability for some years.

Creating an XPS is equally simple, and viewing it ­ or any other XPS file ­ is fine, as long as you are using Vista as your operating system and Internet Explorer as your browser. When I tried to open an XPS file in XP, however, I got a helpful message asking if I wanted to install the Microsoft .Net framework, which struck me as odd, because I was sure I had this installed.

It was certainly there when I wrote about the Word 2007 Ribbon Customizer. And it was still there in Control Panel’s Add/Remove programs. And having run the ‘Repair’ option on it, and restarted the computer, I tried once more to open the XPS file. And up came a message asking if I wanted to install the Microsoft .Net framework.

Abandoning this vicious circle for further research, I found out two things. First, the helpful .Net framework message left out two important words ­ ‘version three’. Mine was version two. Second, there is an alternative to the .Net Framework for viewing XPS, which is the Microsoft XPS Essentials Pack. For 32-bit XP users, this is a 8.9MB download (.Net 3.0 is a 2.8MB intro followed by a 30MB payload).

The pack includes a viewer, thumbnail and metadata handlers, search/indexing filters, and something called the XPS Document Writer, which ‘can also be used by any Windows-compatible application to easily create an XPS Document’ according to Microsoft. This last takes a little finding as it is a printer driver rather than a file format converter, which is why it can be used by any Windows-compatible application. If you go to File, Print, in any program, you should find that Microsoft XPS Document Writer has been added to the list of available printers. When you OK the Print command, you’ll be prompted for a location to save the file.

The writer is much the same as that built in to Vista, but the readers are different. Whereas the XP version launches as a separate application, the Vista version is hosted inside Internet Explorer. And if this isn’t your default browser, you will have problems.