Andy Simonds Blog

Since I moved over to the Office team this blog (primarily focused on XPS) is not very active.  If you are looking for the latest info on XPS, here are some helpful links: 

XPS implementation information at http://www.microsoft.com/xps

XPS in Vista at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/xps.mspx

XPS forum on MSDN at http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/showforum.aspx?forumid=126&siteid=1

The XPS team blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/xps

Adrian Fords blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/adrianford

- Andy

Wooohooooo!!!!  Windows Vista RTM'd today:  http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/default.mspx

Almost 5 years of my life working on this project and we are done. I can't wait to see everyone using it. That is the reward for working so hard on something like this - knowing that people in all corners of the world will be using the software we built. 

- Andy

Sort of Chapter 1 of a 3-part release of the innovation we have been working on for the last 4 or so years. 

Chapter 1 - .NET 3.0.  Contains all of the XPS and OPC document APIs, XPS Viewer and XPS print driver and runs on Windows XP (built into Windows Vista).  It is out today and you can download it here.

Chapter 2 - Release of Office 2007 that contains their new file format based on OPC packaging and XPS 'Save-As' support.  Office 2007 RTM'd last week, with release coming at the end of the month.

Chapter 3 - Release of Windows Vista.  Part A - Business release before end of year, Part B - Consumer release in January.  Contains of course all of our XPS/OPC, Printing, Scanning, Color and Fax innovations we have made over the last several years.  Read the product guide for details on the individual features.

A few things to note: 

1. A very cool white-board demo you have to see.  Posted on Nils van Boxsel's blog (who has a lot of interesting things up on his blog).
2. I noticed that Adobe has announced a new project called 'Mars'.  It seems to be essentially a PDF replacement using XML, SVG and ZIP:  "Mars documents can be created by using XML components representing pages and the overall document structure and then combining them in a Zip package using off-the-shelf XML and ZIP tools".  Sound familiar?  Normally I wouldn't comment on such things, but given the never ending questions we get about XPS being a 'me too' document format, and how much we have educated the industry about the benefits of a document format 'really' being built using open standards like XML and ZIP - it is nice to see such a pure validation of our approach.  All of us in Bldg 2 are deeply flattered.
3. We announced a few weeks back about XPS going to a standards body.  There were some articles in the last week or so quoting a Microsoft executive that said we were not doing that.  That was not accurate - he was ill-informed.  We are still planning on taking XPS to a standards body.
4. Retail Packaging for Windows Vista and Office 2007 has been revealed.  Check it out at the Windows Vista Blog.  Looks very cool.

- Andy

Kofax recently sent out a press release regarding support for XPS in their toolkit for the document capture industry.  Kofax technology is utilized by a majority of the document scanning vendors in the industry and their support for XPS is an important step for broader XPS adoption.

- Andy

The final v1.0 of the XPS spec is available for download.  Get it here.

 - Andy

At 11:30 AM PST - the final version of the XML Paper Specification (v1.0) RTM'd.  This is a great day and represents an incredible amount of hard work, blood-shed, tears, slaying dragons (and lawyers) by the team to get to this point.  We started on this years ago, and at times I thought this day would never come.  I'll try and not be too dramatic, but this really is a milestone for Microsoft and the industry.  I can only image what the years ahead will mean to this technology, how many ways it will be used, how many systems it will be integrated into. 

There are too many people to name that contribued to the spec - maybe I will post an exhaustive list later.   But -  I have to at least not only give thanks to the team that designed it, but also to so many partners of ours that helped review every version of the spec, did prototype implementations, filed bugs, found every little inconsistency they could find and helped drive the spec to the quality it has today. You know who you are and we thank you.

We had a mini-celebration outside my office this morning.  We poured Champagne and all of us signed the first printed copy of v1.0.  When I say RTM (release to manufacturing) that really is only a few days for a spec.  It will be posted very soon on the web and I will blog when that happens.  Next step - is to RTM the code.  That will be a slightly bigger party I think.

Not everyone could attend our little gathering, but a quick pic of the team is below. 

The signed spec -  as soon as the missing people can sign it, I think it will make a nice poster.  I'll post a hi-res version of it when we finish the signatures and those of you outside MS can grab it.  Maybe, we should sign a bunch of hard-copies and do a signing at Barnes and Noble??? (maybe a bit much).

- Andy

I’ve finally purchased my ‘Vista’ PC for my home.  My new PC was custom built from parts from Fry’s with the help (or should I say completely assembled why I just watched) by Britt from the D2 team (thanks Britt).  It’s a smokin’ machine, pretty blue LED lights in front, a bunch of huge drives, 2GB of RAM, ATI 1600 vid card w/512MB of RAM and an AMD 64 bit processor.  It’s a great machine and should last me a long time.  With Windows Vista and Office 2007 installed it is quite nice.  I’m also playing around with Adobe Lightroom Beta 4 which is starting to look like a really good photo processing app for RAW shooters. 

The improvements in Windows Vista are vast.  With the latest builds I am encountering hardly any issues.  It even auto-detected my networked HP 6127 (XP can’t do that!) and although there was no built in driver (boo!),  I was easily able to install the XP driver from HPs website and I was on my way.  We talk a lot about ‘integrated search’ but a cool place to see this at work (other than the Start menu which is a pretty obvious improvement) is in Control Panel.   When you open Control Panel you are presented with a list of icons like ‘System and Maintenance’ and ‘Security’, etc.  But, we all know there is a pant-load of settings and configuration options lurking below those 10 icons.  If you switch to ‘Classic View’ you can see it gets pretty overwhelming quickly.  But – forget classic view, just go up to the ubiquitous ‘Search’ box at the top and type what you are looking for – very quickly that big simple UI transforms itself into a list of all the things in control panel that may pertain to what you typed.  Try things like ‘remote’ or ‘password’ or ‘desktop’ and you get a quick list of all things that can be tweeked that relate to what you typed.

But the real validation came from my son, who when he saw Windows Vista in its full-glass-glory for the first time, simply said “super-cool!”.  There are a lot of great things in the product, but when people look at it and think “I’ve got to have that” – that is what will really cause Windows Vista to take off.

Andy 

A few random updates.  But 1st, I mentioned putting up a picture of the spec.  Here it is in its' baby-blue splendor:

Will these internally printed copies be worth anything at some point?  Something about it seems more valuable than the boring bits and bytes representation up on the web.  Maybe if it is signed by the people who designed it?  Would it get $4 on e-bay?  Well, some people outside of bldg 2 now have copies.  We had a plug-fest last week that was attended by 22 hardware and software vendors that are actively building XPS solutions and we gave them all a physical copy of the spec.  It was amazing seeing the collaboration going on - people exchanging test files, working with each other, finding bugs.  Not like some boring plugfest for a typical standard (like USB 2.0) - but a plugfest on something that is completely voluntary to implement - something brand new - something that will have impact on the participating companies business.  We are so close. In fact, close enough that I finally booked my post-Vista vacation to the Big Island in December.  Bugs are slowly going down, quality is great, we are going to ship. 

If you want to seeem some cool, hidden-gems on what Vista can do, go visit Tim Sneath's blog.  He's got a running list of cool Vista features, some I had no idea existed.  Check it out.

- Andy

A new article on digital signatures is up on MSDN.  Written by Andrey Shur (our all-knowing, all-seeing PM on packaging technology) it gives an overview of how the whole OPC Digital Signing Framework works.  I know the Bears and Seahawks are playing this weekend, but you may want to spend that time reading this article instead.

- Andy

Version .95 of the XPS spec is now available.  Download it from the XPS download site.  Also, go to the main XPS blog to get all the details on what is new and what is changed with this version.  Specs were printed out in baby-blue this time.  Last version was dark blue - so I can only conclude that we are moving towards the 1.0 version being white as the covers get lighter.  Likely it is simply Jesse's random choice.  I'll take a picture at some point to share.

We are basically done.  We are there, it's all wrapped up.  Years of work and we are about to ship, and the spec is essentially locked down.  1.0 will just be formatting, index type of things.   When Vista ships - this will be quite the year to remember.  It would only be better if the US won the Ryder Cup.  I'm still trying to get over how bad that was. 

-Andy

Next week I am off to Boston to speak at the InfoTrends Office Document Solutions conference.  Feel free to make fun of the bad picture of me on the website.  The title of my talk is 'XPS Revealed'.  I'm going to take an stab at really explaining some of the fundamental trends in the software industry, what customers have been looking for and how it lead us to make the investments in XPS and the overall document platform in Vista.  Should be fun for everyone.

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Tim Sneath has a great list of quick-links to new downloads of Windows Vista/.NET RC1available.  I stole it for your convenience:

• Windows Vista RC1 (Customer Preview Program, MSDN and TechNet Subscribers)
• .NET Framework 3.0 RC1
• Windows SDK RC1
• Visual Studio "Orcas" Extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 RC1 (also see readme for WPF designer)
• Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation
• Expression Interactive Designer September CTP
• Expression Graphics Designer September CTP

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Summer is over here.  After the driest summer in history (everything is brown) and lots of fires still ranging in the mountains - the rain came today.  It's all over - we are doomed to pay for the great summer with 6 months straight rain.  So sad.    Here is an interesting picture I took this weekend. 

- Andy

Beta 2 of the XPS essentials pack is out.  Read about the details and how to download at the XPS team blog.  Here is the quick list of what is in the pack:

- Andy

RC1 of .NET 3.0 and Windows Vista has shipped.  If you are a beta tester for Vista you already should have access to the released bits.  Anyone can download .NET 3.0 from here. .NET 3.0 contains the latest bits of Windows Presentation Foundation and of course the platform APIs for XPS and the XPS viewer.  Also - the XPS print driver is available in the package as well, so you essentially have everything you need in .NET 3.0 to create, program and view XPS documents.

You may have noticed that my blog is not as active as of late.  We are in ship-mode, fixing bugs, putting out fires and starting a little bit of work on 'what's next' for the team.  So not a lot of news for me to report on, but rest assured the team is working its' behind off to get this product shipped.

In the news, Software Imaging has announced an SDK for XPS print drivers.  Read about it here.

-Andy

In the July CTP of .NET 3.0 (formerly WinFX) the XPS print driver (MXDW) is included in the package.  This may have been missed by a lot of people because, frankly we kind of forgot to tell everyone.  So, if you are using Windows XP and have been wondering how to get a hold of the latest XPS print driver - just download the July CTP.  But DANGER - you have to go to this link directly.

There is a bug in setup on the main link on the .NET 3.0 site that causes the print driver to not be installed.  We will hopefully get it fixed.  In the meantime go to the link above.

- Andy