I’ve seen several comments and questions about viewers for XPS – even some articles that have said that XPS won’t be successful because it only works on Windows platforms! <sigh> so hard to keep people from making stuff up to create interesting stories about XPS. That was one of my motivations to write my earlier blog entry about XPS being cross platform.
On the issue of viewers, I thought it would be a good idea to set the record straight on what we are doing here in Building 2 about viewer support across different platforms. 1st – we are building a viewer on top of Windows Presentation Foundation. This viewer is supported on all platforms that WPF is supported:
Vista, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. The viewer is integrated into IE, supports viewing XPS documents (really), searching text, read/write digital signatures and read/restrict with RMS. This viewer is built on WPF which makes it a good reference for how to render an XPS document correctly. Our goal is to make the specification unambiguous enough that you won’t have to go to the platform to determine how to render correctly – but in the case the situation comes up, this viewer is the appropriate one to look at.
Download the WinFX Runtime Components September CTP to experiment with the integrated viewer and give Microsoft some informed feedback. Here’s a latest screen-shot of this viewer:
Other Windows Vewers
We are currently working on a simple stand-alone viewer (not integrated into IE) that will also be supported from
Vista through Windows 2000. Currently this viewer will not support RM and Digital Signatures, but it may in the future. Sorry – have to be a bit cagey on the ship date right now until our plans get more solid.
Other Platform Viewers
We are planning on having viewers that support Mac and Unix—cross platform support is a critical part of the XPS story. I also know that there are several third-parties looking at building solutions for other platforms – so potentially the market will deliver something on its own, which would be great.
We are kicking around the idea of having a contest and giving out prizes for the best Mac/Unix-Linux/other-platform viewer. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what would help motivate people to create viewers on their favorite platform.
So short story;
- Windows
Vista through Windows 2000 > Yes
- Mac, Unix, Linux > Yes, but post-Vista launch.
- Think you can build a better viewer than Microsoft? > Go for it!
