Microsoft, Adobe in Battleground

Microsoft has announced that it has chartered a new Technical Committee to submit a new standard to the standards-setting body Ecma International. The would-be standard involves "creating an XML-based electronic paper format and page description language that is consistent with existing implementations of Microsoft's XML Paper Specification (XPS)."

Adobe, of course, wants PDF to remain the dominant format for exchanging document information over the web and is even considering suing Microsoft over its efforts to establish XPS as a new standard by bundling an XPS document writer with Windows Vista (and Office 2007). Adobe has also submitted the PDF format for approval as an ISO standard.
the outcome of this "standards war" is unlikely to affect the public in any significant way. Both Adobe and Microsoft are powerful software titans who wish to preserve their respective market positions. Adobe, for their part, has never opened up the whole of the PDF format—only a subset of its full functionality called PDF/A is available for anyone to implement—and the Office 2007 example suggests that the company is willing to sacrifice openness to preserve its market position.

PDF didn't become the de facto standard by being open in any case; it was the free availability of the Acrobat Reader combined with the innate utility of the software and lack of viable competitors that caused PDF to dominate the Internet landscape. Having both PDF and XPS confirmed as standards by the ECMA and/or ISO will mean that it will be up to computer users to decide which format is more useful to their needs. Microsoft will surely have a tough time trying to supplant the ubiquitous PDF, which currently enjoys robust support on many different platforms.