xps files

XPS is a Microsoft document standard, which stands for “XML Paper Specification“. It is basically a zipped XML file. Under Linux you can open it with okular.

Windows Vista includes it by default, and uses it as the spooler format (Linux uses Postscript, and there’s a move to switch to PDF), and uses IE as the viewer. WinXP users get it through .NET 3.0

From the Wikipedia article, the XPS standard is released by M$ “under a royalty-free patent license“, however “as long as you include a notice within the source that technologies implemented may be encumbered by patents held by Microsoft“. Hmm, that doesn’t sound too nice :-/

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_Paper_Specification

~ by azimout on May 28, 2009.