What are XPS documents

XPS is a new format, based on XML, for electronic documents created by Microsoft, available in all installations of Windows Vista.

I recently discovered XPS, the new document format created by Microsoft. After doing some research, it seems interesting to post an article to explain a bit what it is.

XPS, which stands for XML Paper Specification, is a document format designed to be easy to share, read, and print. XPS is a platform-independent format (which could be read on any operating system), open and royalty-free (it can be used in any case without having to pay any royalties to the creator). Microsoft has recently released this format and they have integrated it with Windows Vista and Office 2007.

The integration with Windows Vista is immediate, since the operating system has an XPS printer incorporated, to be able to print any document in this format from any program, just as we may have seen PDF printers, which allow you to create PDFs from any program with the option to print. With this we obtain files with an .xps extension, which can be read on any system, as long as it has an XPS viewer installed.

In Windows Vista, the XPS document viewer is integrated into Internet Explorer itself, so to open an XPS document we will have to do it with Microsoft Explorer. For those who wish, you can also download a program called XPS Viewer, to view XPS documents directly without having to use Internet Explorer. In addition, there is a package called “Xps Essentials Pack” that includes the document viewer and a program to create them. All of these programs are free.

In Windows XP, the viewer would have to be installed separately, because it does not initially have compatibility with the XPS format. Although for this we have to install the .NET Framework 3.0 first, which takes a long time and a few downloads to finally be able to see the XPS documents.

I leave here a series of interesting links about XPS for those who want to investigate or work on this new format: (I’m sorry, but all these links are in English)

XPS and PDF

The format is, in my opinion, a bet by Microsoft to compete with the PDF format, although it still has a long way to go before it becomes a true open standard. In fact, to get an XPS document displayed in XP we have to spend some time and do some downloading.

Continuing with the similarities with respect to PDF, it could be said that PDF is based on PostScript while XPS is based on XML. It must be said that it sounds quite good that the format is based on XML, due to the advantages of this language in terms of compatibility and portability.

Future possibilities for XPS documents

It is easy for Windows Vista users to become familiar with the XPS format, because when printing a file, the XPS printer option always appears. In fact, my interest in the format arose from that point. In addition, as at the time of writing this article there is no support for Windows Vista of any free virtual PDF printer (to generate PDF files with the print action of the programs), so there is no other possibility to use the XPS printer that comes included . This will undoubtedly make users start using the XPS format and make it known naturally among their contacts.

However, we will have to wait a while until the distribution of XPS content and documents is as common as that of the PFD format. I do not have much room for doubt that Microsoft will achieve it. However, regarding Microsoft’s work to integrate XPS, it is not at all clear to me what he means when he says that Office 2007 has compatibility with XPS, if then I cannot open that format with Word or save a document with an XPS extension from Office , unless you are using the XPS printer that comes with Windows Vista.