A few months ago word came out that Microsoft was going to include PDF functionality in their next version of Office.

When Microsoft quietly let the world know it surprised many - because it was done with little fanfare. But it was clear why they decided upon this. Government said they would only use office suites that only supported open formats … like PDF.

Microsoft has literally been dragged kicking and screaming into accepting open standards (remember: Microsoft have made their billions on stringent proprietary software over the years), but times are a changin’, hence their move to include PDF in Office 2007 - and the people (that’ll be the customers who fork out the money for such products) have been asking for this for years.

Microsoft is still pretty much of the old school. They still want people to use their proprietary systems so they keep on buying and upgrading. That scenario is dead and buried and the Redmond folks are slowly realizing this - starting with “live” offerings.

So, Microsoft planned to offer a “Save to PDF” function in Office 2007, but the threat of legal action from Adobe may have them reconsidering.

PDFZone has a special ongoing report on the issue.

PDF is the clear leader and powerhouse in document management. Microsoft have tried with their own format (XPS) - it essentially wants to offer both formats - PDF and it’s own XPS , obviously trying to drag back Adobe’s market share in this area. But PDF has had a long head start and the vast majority of web users - that would be in the many, many millions - are quite happy and settled on PDF. Information publishers have been delivering their products via PDF quite happily for years now.

Read the special report at PDFZone, but … with all the rubbish between the two - why not just head straight for OpenOffice which incorporates PDF functionality quite well, is free and what many are saying does a splendid job.

Information publishers have been delivering their products via PDF quite happily for years now.

It’s either that or having to buy another add-on third-party app for Office 2007 to have the PDF capabilities available to you - and that just makes users more annoyed.

A note to Adobe and Microsoft: Sit down together and work this out - standards such as Office and PDF are what make business run smoothly and deliver consumer confidence. Don’t mess with that.

And what does this mean for information products developers? Keep on using PDF - it’s the industry standard by a huge margin, something even Microsoft may not be able to reign in.