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Microsoft Metro Aims To Be PDF ReplacementPerhaps the most talked-about technology at Microsoft's annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference last week was a new file format, code-named Metro, that could move the company into the market for electronic paper.
Its toughest competitor in that arena will be Adobe Systems Inc., which makes the popular Acrobat software and created the Portable Document Format standard for viewing, modifying, and printing files, regardless of the software a user runs.
Metro will be part of Microsoft's upcoming Longhorn operating system for PCs and servers, due in a public test version this summer, said chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates in a speech at the conference.
A final version could arrive by Christmas 2006. "If you look at Longhorn as a whole, it's very broad, what we're doing," he said. "It's easy to say it's a next-generation platform."
That platform will include Metro, a combination file format, document viewer, and "page description language" that can print graphics-packed files with higher fidelity than Windows can today.
It's reliant on technology called Avalon that will ship with Longhorn. Microsoft last week released a technical specification for Metro and plans to license the technology, based on XML, at no charge.
PC users are generating more advanced graphics with PowerPoint and other apps,
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18/5/2005 | Viewed 18,107 time(s)
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